Social Media releases defended

Just read a great post over at PR 2.0 in defense of the Social Media Release. Posted by Brian Solis, the piece explains in depth why the SMR is not a Meatball Sundae. He'll also tell you what that is (hint: Seth Godin).

I thoroughly enjoyed this as his passion for effective communication in a New Media world came through loud and clear. While he admits that continued experimentation and audience segmentation and targeting are essential, he totally slams those that are trying desperately to cling to the wreckage that is traditional PR. I recommend it for those who are just learning about the potential these tools have.

On only one point do my views differ. He writes:

I only propose that they stop talking and theorizing and get some real world experience in the realm of Social Media so we can discuss things as experienced, beaten, successful, and most-importantly, proven peers

We must not stop talking about these important issues and we must not ask others to shut up because they don't meet our standards for a "proven peer." Haven't we all had enough of rule by the intelligentsia? Isn't that what Social Media is really about, giving voice to the crowd, being the medium that levels the playing field? Besides, without their well-meaning but misguided efforts they might never have riled Mr. Solis up enough to give us this excellent post.

Who is leveraging the blog

Blogs are great tools. Risky, to be sure, but wonderful for SEO, brand building, message dissemination, training, building employee morale and more. It's clear I believe that because I write about it a lot, but who else is on this bandwagon?

Periodically, a journalist will include a few high-profile corporate CEOs in a story about blogging from the executive suite, but for a more comprehensive list, check out the CEO Blogs tab over at CorporateLeaderDaily.com. It might surprise you how many of today's top business leaders are using this powerful tool.

CIT: Getting B2B Online Video Right

Finally, a great use of online video for B2B marketing can be found on the CIT website. Here's what these guys are doing right, IMHO:

• Keeping it short; none of these videos are longer than 3 minutes;
• Focusing on the topic; each segment centers on one or two related questions;
• Professional production; making it easy to see and smooth to stream;
• Backing it up; plenty of related material elsewhere on the page;
• Creating a series; the viewer is pulled from segment to segment;
• Serving the viewer; nothing about CIT here, it's all about informing us;
• Made it easy; it starts automatically...but not until you scroll down.
  

Very well done and a great example for your own B2B marketing efforts. Click the start button to start the video.

Gartner: Banks will embrace Web 2.0

According to a story on Bank Systems & Technology's site, Gartner is predicting that 75% of banks will be using Web 2.0 technologies within 5 years.

This makes sense as banks are working very hard to forge stronger links to their customers in the hope of achieving higher share-of-wallet. But BS&T's Michael Ellison makes a good point when he says:

"That's all well and good, but just because your site makes use of AJAX does not mean it's a Web 2.0 site. The key is adding the social interaction..."

The technologies are there to enable the companies to facilitate the conversation. It's the conversation that leads to the relationship and on to the next sale.

SEO versus good messaging

I have been watching the SEO crowd for some time now. At first I was fascinated at the interplay. A group of clever web professionals would study the major search engines, deduce their methods for ranking sites and then sell that knowledge to clients. Then the search engines would recalibrate their spiders and the process would repeat. Good business for SEO guys. Similar in some respects to the race for better police radar gun detectors, but with a difference.

There is no good alternative to a good radar detector, save compliance. Either you obey the speed limit or you invest in technology. That's not really true with SEO.

I've said for some time that a well written site will lead people to you as long as you have a niche and you have plenty of content. In a recent post on his Strategic Public Relations blog, Kevin Dugan writes:

"SEO’s effectiveness is proven and it’s an important tool. But a well-tailored message should make elements of SEO automatic."

Well said. I would only add that to be effective, this messaging must be updated frequently (blog, perhaps) and should be archived on the site.

Realtors get Web 2.0

According to Joel Burslem, one of the Inman News bloggers over at the Future of Real Estate Marketing blog, attendees at the recent National Association of Realtors show in Las Vegas seem to be getting social media's promise for marketers. He writes:

"I think most people get Web 2.0 - they understand the power of a blog or a social network, for example. They understand the value of syndicating their listings. They know they should be thinking about video tours for their listings. The what? and why? questions have, for the most part, been answered. It’s the how? that they’re wrestling with more and more now."

This is a good sign. Few industries could benefit as much as the real estate sales industry from New Media tools, for at least two reasons. First, we know that the vast majority of home buyers and mortgage loan prospects are hitting the Internet first before talking to a person about the transaction. Secondly, real estate agents make their living through a personal interaction with their customers. That adds up to a lot of opportunity.

5 Trends from the WOW Feed

George Dearing has a good post on his blog. He points to five key trends that together may spell death for the old ways of marketing. He points to other folks saying the same thing.

Of his trends to watch, I put most stock in the first one. It's always about conversations. Of course, in the old days it was just consumers having imaginary conversations with or about a company's brand. "This new beamer will make me a god!"

Today, the Web has made it possible for brands to talk back. These are the final days for those that do not.

The informational website as PR tool

There was a time, a few years ago when it was harder to find information on the Internet and companies were even less comfortable with sharing their knowledge over an open network, when launching a special website could convince some publics that your company really cared about someone you wanted them to think you really cared about. That's not quite as true today.

I cover the real estate finance industry, so I was there when the National Home Equity Lending Association (NHEMA), a trade group made up of subprime lenders who some consumer advocates accused of predatory lending, launched its Borrowsmart website, a tool to help homebuyers with less than perfect credit avoid spending too much on a subprime loan. Be careful about buying our products, they warned. Judging from the current subprime lending crisis, we can assume it didn't work so well.

Recently, the American Land Title Association (ALTA), the trade organization for title insurance agents, launched a site that, in part, is designed to help people avoid spending too much on title insurance. Hmmm. I wrote about that on another blog.

Both subprime lenders and title insurance agents were working to change negative consumer attitudes about their line of business. They were really just taking a page out of big tobacco's play book. Spend 1% on ads telling people not to use your products and they'll forgive you for spending 99% to promote something you know will kill them.

But this isn't intended to be an indictment of bad public relations efforts, or of informational websites, for that matter. I'm just telling you that if you hope to change a negative public opinion by putting information online be aware of how your efforts, no matter how well meant, will appear to others. Save the Internet real estate for stories about how you help other folks, not for information about how they can help themselves by avoiding what you're selling.

It's probably better to think of it like this: when you come upon your friend (someone you really care about) sinking in quicksand, prattling on about the many ways he might save himself is largely a waste of time. Your real options are to throw him a rope or a branch or something and save him, or not.

Law Firm Train Wreck Coming

All innovation must first pass through a period of massive misuse as people learn how to leverage the new tools to achieve their ends. This is often costly and embarrassing for early adopters. It is sometimes possible to leap frog this step if you are careful to observe how others, particularly those in other industries, are using new tools and techniques. This is certainly true with New Media marketing.

According to this story in the New York Times online, law firms are using online video as a recruiting tool. Hip to the power of YouTube to attract young people who might be suited to be summer associates, a number of legal firms have hired creative agencies to create multimedia in the hope that it will go viral on the Web.

The legal industry is late to the game. PR firms in New York and Philadelphia (among other places) made headlines last year when they created fictitious characters to star in their clients' online media. One high profile case involved the creation of a wandering RV family that traveled from Wal-Mart parking lot to parking lot across the country. A great idea from a top agency, but instead of sending out some kid with a digital camera to troll the lots for interesting folks, they decided to lie.

Lying, of course, is a time-honored technique in advertising, but New Media marketing is closer to PR, wherein we shine a very bright light on your company in the hope that your important audiences will see how good you are. Lying is not good. It has already come back to haunt a number of companies in other industries. I suspect it will soon haunt the legal industry too. The twist here is that those guys really like to file lawsuits. Duck and cover.

Is the VNR in Danger

There's a lot of buzz around the Web right now about the Federal Communication Commission fining a television station for running a company's Video News Release (VNR) without letting its viewers know that it was paid by the company featured. It's being called the "FCC's Fake News Fine" around the blogosphere and it's got a lot of people worried that the lucrative business of creating short segments for television news producers is about to disappear.

I'm watching this closely, not because I compete in that space, but because I believe a lot more companies will be competing there soon. I'm not the only one. Production costs are dropping, the opportunities for placement are increasing and competitive forces will become more powerful.

I don't think this is going to take away a useful tool, but it will raise the stakes for those companies that hope to leverage it. Some will just lawyer up (and effectively sprinkle poison over their creatives) but others will learn to tell good stories instead of making up fake news. Producers are always looking for stories that will keep their viewers tuned in until the final credits roll.

What the FCC has done, IMO, is raise the standards a bit. That's almost never a bad thing.

New Ways to Share Information

New Media isn't just podcasts and Internet video, it's about using the power of the Internet to do a better job of getting critical information across to important audiences.

Here's an example. This timeline for real estate technology is interactive. You can grab it and move forward and backward in time. When you find something you're interested in, you can click on the thumb tack and more information is provided, with links to source material elsewhere on the Web.

This is a great example of communicators using the Web to bring information from disparate sources into a new form that is far more useful. Nice work. Thanks to blogger Joel Burslem at the Future of Real Estate Marketing blog for bringing this to my attention.

The Right Way to Post a Podcast

Most blogging platforms now make it easy to insert audio or video into a blog post. This is good, but just plunking a big MP3 file down in the middle of your blog is not a very good thing to do to your readers.

Letting your listeners know what's on the file is always a good idea. Because I produce business podcasts, I like to let my listeners know exactly what questions I ask and how far into the file it happens. That allows busy listeners to get right to the answers they want to hear.

Here's a good example from an unexpected source. I haven't played D&D for a while, but it's good to see the guys are keeping up with the times, at least as far as it relates to good form when adding a podcast to your blog.

Blogging is Good for Your Business

More information pointing to the positive effect a few blog posts per week can have on your business. This time from bMighty.com, an online sister publication to InformationWeek.

Wells Fargo's Winning Webcast

I've done some belly aching in this space about the horrendous use many companies are making of webinars and webcasts. I'm getting multiple invitations per day to these online events, which usually turn out to be unsolicited sales presentations masquerading as must-see content for improving my business. Waste of time.

I have to admit that when I was invited to Wells Fargo's webcast and promised that I would learn about leveraging technology for my business, I figured it would be more of the same. My own bank had recently lured me in on the promise of a free check scanner to make depositing my handful of monthly retainer checks that much easier. It was only later that I learned that it would cost me a hefty monthly fee. Did I say my bank? I meant my ex-bank. I expected to spend an hour hearing about Wells Fargo's check scanner. But I didn't.

Instead, I was entertained and enlightened through the use of what appeared to be a professionally produced television program, streamed to me across either Real Player or Windows Media Player. In addition, I was given a second screen for slides and a text box to enter my questions. The presentation was very slick, which gave me the impression it was pre-produced. I did not pose a question so I cannot say whether the Q&a session was live or staged.

What I can say is that while the company did take the opportunity to explain and promote a number of its products, both through an expert on the panel and video vignettes of satisfied customers, the panel also provided actionable information that I can use in my business as promised in the original invitation. And I actually did learn something, making this the best use of my time on any Web-based presentation thus far.

Nothing's perfect, so:

Recommendations: Make it shorter. I appreciate the fact that your experts are covering a lot of ground and you have a well-rounded panel, but 60 minutes is a large investment, even if I can make it without leaving my desk. Secondly, it's good to have the slide show available, but there's no reason to make it industry-standard boring. There are plenty of resources out there to teach companies how to make better use of that white box. If you really feel that we need to see the bullet points, make them available to us afterward in a text document.

The Ever Popular Webinar

I've passed the three Webinar invitations per day threshold and the trend doesn't seem to be slowing down. Everyone wants an hour of my time. They all promise to answer the toughest questions and provide valuable insight that will change my business. Too often, the change they have in mind involves cutting them a check every month and the information consists of their accounts receivable mailing address.

Enough. There must be some accountability here. People will not continue to stand by while vendors line them up for hour-long sales pitches. Here are some tips for managing expectations better with this Web 2.0 tool.

1) Set webinar goals in terms of the attendee, not the host. It's not about you getting 50 qualified leads (at least it's not only about that), it's about attendees walking away better informed about something than they were when they got there.

2) Don't turn the webinar into a product demo unless the attendees have signed up for a product demo. If you promise to talk about industry trends, you better lay them out.

3) Quit wasting an hour of our time. Who has an hour to spend on a webinar? If the attendee has that much time on his hands, he's not making any money. Cut them down to 30 minutes, max.

4) If you promise attendees will get a free white paper or other informational product, make it easy for them to get it. Luring them in and then making them complete the Mackay 66 before you give them the link is not cool.

5) Don't let untrained executives run the webinar. Hire someone who can get the program moving and keep it moving. It does not serve the host well to have attendees hang up the phone and sigh in relief. You want them to leave the meeting wishing they had more time.

Is this to say that the host can't have any goals for the webinar? Of course not, but they are secondary to the goals and needs of the attendees or you will get people in the doors once and only once. In my next post, I'll talk about how to make webinars pay dividends for the company that hosts them.

Apple preloads company content

Apple is making an appeal directly to corporate communications and marketing departments by making it's iPod line of portable music and video players available with pre-loaded company content. Smart.

We've been doing that for some time because giving away an iPod is a great attention-grabbing tactic. Preloading it with your company sales message is just the extension of a good idea.

Keeping the Team on the Same Page

One of the great uses of new media is keeping everyone inside the organization on the same page. I have seen so many companies with great product offerings and a willing market fall down because the whole team couldn't pull together.

One team that does a great job of this is Oklahoma City-based a la mode. I was out at their annual users conference in Las Vegas recently and was really impressed with the way all of the folks I podcasted with seemed to be on the same page related to the a la mode Labs initiative and its overall mission. So I asked Communication's Director Matt Barr how it was done.

"There's no trick to it. It all comes down to Dave's leadership. Many owners and corporate officers are good at communicating; leadership is communicating what you believe and believing what you communicate," Matt said.

He's right about that. I listened to a la mode's founder and owner Dave Biggers talk to his customers for three days. His message never changed and he was passionate about what his team was doing the whole time.

Matt went on, "Adam [Calvery] and Chris [Low] hear what Dave says about the company and the Labs and then the Lab Fellows hear from Adam and Chris what they'd hear if Dave told them himself. This, incidentally, is where you would start if you ever explored the reasons behind a la mode's phenomenal success as a company over the last 22 years."

Nice plug, Matt. But he's got a point. Leaders have to use every tool available to get everyone in their organization on the same page and pulling in the same direction. I was proud to be chosen by the company to produce some podcasts to serve that end. But the best tools are probably passion and consistency. They are being employed here to good benefit.

The Chivas life includes video blogging

These were the folks who first took advantage of pervasive e-mail by sending us those little comics. Now, they have fully embraced the video podcast. Some nice work here. Check it out.

http://thisisthelife.msn.com/

Podcasting at a la mode's annual convention

I'm in Vegas this week for the a la mode Annual Users Conference. The company estimates that close to 1,000 attendees will visit the event for at least one of its three days. I'm on the blogging team for the event. You can find the convention blog here.

Later today, I'll be podcasting with the company's Lab Fellows. These forward-thinking residential real estate appraisers are part of an inititative the company hopes will put better technology in the hands of the nation's only independent auditors of the real estate transaction. The podcasts will end up on the Labs website.

a la mode is one of an increasing number of companies that is realizing that you must make these stories available in a variety of media. The blog, podcasts and the Lab-focused live sessions at the event are all aimed at disseminating a story that is critical to the success of the firm's marketing efforts.

Talking New Media at MBA Secondary

I made it into New York City for the Mortgage Bankers Association's Secondary Market show a couple of weeks back. I love conventions because it allows me to catch up with all of the folks I've been writing about for years.

I spent some time at the Avista Solutions booth visiting with Ken Ellis. He's been reading the blog and wondered what I thought of Webinars as opposed to podcasts.

I never liked being told when to appear online or on a conference call to receive the same news everyone else was getting by someone who either didn't know what my schedule was or didn't care. Most journalists, at least in the financial services trade media, are under very heavy deadline pressure just about all the time. That was surely the case when I worked for Source Media and October Research. It wasn't very nice to hear that if I didn't show up at the appointed time everyone but me would get the news.

But, as Ken pointed out, companies need to know who is looking at their content if they hope to capitalize on the sales leads that content is intended to deliver. That's true enough.

You can tell who is present on a Webinar, especially if you force people to pre-register. If you just put content out there for free, anyone can pick it up and it's very difficult to track. Making people cough up a bunch of information before you send them to the download page is a sure way to annoy them.

So what's the answer? You have to use a combination of free content--designed to unlock the three golden doors that lead to sales, 1) show them you understand their problem, 2) show them you are smart enough to solve their problem and 3) show them you care about helping them solve their problem--and more secure content designed to deliver the qualified sales lead.

Ken was kind enough to point out a good example:

I think SalesPOP! does an exceptional job of presenting this on their website. They offer podcasts requiring no information, but if you want to hear the longer Webinar there is a form that is required. Their website is www.salespop.biz\home.htm.

By way of disclosure, neither Ken nor I do any business with this company, nor are we affiliated with it, but Ken admits that he knows a SalesPOP founder, Craig Pyne, a previous coworker. Check out the site and think about how you can leverage this idea.