Zeno Group Blog

The Social 7 is a weekly video podcast hosted by Zeno Group’s Digital Lifestyle Team (Nick Mendoza, Alex Miller, and Andrea Nowack) that recaps the week’s top seven stories in social media and marketing.  You can view past episodes at http://www.thesocial7.com or follow us on Twitter (@thesocial7).

Welcome to the fourth episode of The Social 7, a conversation on the Top 7 Stories in social media and marketing. We have a great line up for you today, including the brand new viral video of the week, detailed in the show notes below. Quick note – due to the holidays we will not issue an episode next week, however, we’ll be back the following week (Jan. 5) with a brand new episode. Happy holidays, and see you in 2009!

More details on all the stories, plus Tweet of the Week, Social Shutterbug, and Viral Video of the Week, after the jump…

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The end of each year inevitably results in discussions of what made headlines over the past 12 months. In marketing communications, the rapid growth of social media in 2008 has captivated our attention and inspires us to think about the engagement opportunities that lie ahead. Peter Kim, a thought leader in social media, invited 14 other highly respected experts to share their predictions for what to expect in the continuously evolving world of social media. The crystal ball on the 2009 conversation revealed a widespread belief that social media will experience continued growth, while also undergoing much needed refinement and humanization.

1) Quality of community, not quantity of connections
• Charlene Li: “Having thousands of friends becomes ‘so 2008’ and defriending becomes the hot new trend.”
• Greg Verdino: “We’ll start using online social platforms to stay connected with the people we actually know and care about.”

2) Humans power relationships
• David Armano: “Organizations will realize they require warm bodies and bright minds in order to successfully execute programs.”
• Pete Blackshaw: “2009 will also be the year we rediscover the appeal of ‘live intimacy.’”

3) Conversation is the most valued currency
• Rohit Bhargava: “Measure with customer service metrics like retention/satisfaction & social metrics like engagement.”
• Todd Defren: “Measurement is the bugbear of marketing … Look for a well-respected marketing guru to advocate for a simplified approach that all can rally around.”

The ability to accurately define what’s going to happen in social media next year is anyone’s guess – literally anyone. Social media is powered by people and the members of the varied communities across a multitude of networks. We all define how it will look in 2009 based on our participation, shared interests and the headlines in our conversation. I look forward to joining this lively discussion – an ongoing debate is one prediction every influencer can agree upon.

A few months ago, Los Angeles Magazine announced that downtown LA was named the “third bloggiest neighborhood” in the US. That’s a pretty cool claim to fame, if you ask me, but I have noticed that as local dailies die out, readers are turning to local blogs to get their news (or perhaps local dailies are dying out because people find more value in local blogs.)

Whatever the case, I moved to LA not too long ago and one of my favorite things about this city is the number of great local blogs. (I mean, West Linn, OR = cool, but newsworthy? Not so much, unless you count the occasional “a couple was caught being intimate on the baseball field” type stories – yes, that really was printed in the West Linn Tidings, and a friend of mine has the clipping hanging on her fridge if you’d like proof.) From LA Observed to LAist and a bunch of others, it is not hard to see why both print-affiliated and citizen journalists alike in LA are trading in their pens for Apples.

In fact, our dependence on local blogs has forced local dailies to hop on the blogging bandwagon as well, with most local papers having at least one (if not, several) affiliate blogs. This is smart for a number of different reasons:

1. Local blogs are rapidly growing in both readership and sheer numbers;
2. Blogs foster a two-way dialogue, whereas print publications are only one-sided;
3. Blogs support the ‘eco-friendly’ direction our society is headed (aka, green is trendy);
4. Blogs enable the 24-hour news cycle our now ‘always on’ society craves, especially during times of crisis (check out LA Now’s 24/7 coverage of the LA fires, for example);
5. Blogs allow local dailies to push out their content in a variety of different ways (RSS, e-mail and Twitter, for example) instead of just via subscription.

A few weeks ago, Steve Rubel predicted that by 2014, we will see the end of tangible media as we know it. And that’s a modest prediction in comparison to MediaWeek, who foresees the fall of many local dailies by 2010. My first though was, “No way! Where would our credible news come from?!” But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that, yeah, maybe tangible media will die out in theory, but the big (smart) dailies will never go away; they will simply switch their focus online.

The Technology of Politics

Last Saturday, my colleague Alex and I had the opportunity to attend the Election 2008 conference at the University of Southern California. The two panels we sat in on were entitled “Challenges for the New Administration and the Two Parties: POLITICO Editors and Reporters Look to the Future” and “Technology in Politics: How Campaigns Use the Internet to Talk to Voters.” Though the first was extremely interesting from a political perspective, the latter (and its focus on digital media) is what interested me most.

Over the past year, it was evident that online technology and social media played an integral role in the 2008 Presidential election, with some even claiming that the Internet won Barack Obama the election. Though I don’t personally agree with that bold claim, Obama’s use of the Internet and social media to mobilize and directly connect with supporters certainly helped.

What Obama Did Right

During the 2008 Election, Obama used social media in ways no other candidate ever has. Obama had a Facebook fan page with more than 3.2 million fans (Michelle also has her very own fan page), and a Facebook application with 164,551 subscribers. He had a MySpace page with more than 1 million friends. He even created his own social network, MyBarackObama.com. Some 3.2 million supporters donated to the Obama campaign through an excellent, well-maintained Web site. He had a Twitter account and tweeted frequently, ultimately becoming the single most followed entity on Twitter. His campaign launched an iPhone application (something that panelist Becki Donatelli admitted the McCain campaign was quite jealous of). He even announced his pick of Vice President via text message. Yes, now President-elect Barack Obama has made social media part of his everyday life (even post-election, when he took his weekly address online.)

It is clearly evident that times are changing – not only in Presidential campaigning, but in our overall media consumption habits as well. I credit Obama for thinking a few steps ahead of the rest, being the first Presidential candidate to launch a truly integrated campaign (and get it right). As one of the panelists on the above mentioned Election 2008 technology panel stated – Obama didn’t invent the technology; he simply perfected it.

What McCain Missed

Though some attribute McCain’s loss to his lack of engagement with technology, personally I don’t think it was his lack of using the technology (he did, after all, have a Facebook fan page, a MySpace page, and a Twitter account, to name a few); it was more a matter of his objective (which, unlike Obama seemed to be a means to an end instead an end itself). We heard it in nearly every public speech and interview made – “McCain has the experience” – and along with his experience in office, he also has more experience campaigning, even being directly involved in the 2000 race for the Republican Presidential nomination against George W. Bush. Though he lost the race, he did learn a lot about campaigning in the process, taking those lessons and applying them to the race in 2008. However, McCain seemed to have taken the wrong lesson out of 2000, focusing more on the end result (ie, media relations and generating positive press coverage) and not enough on connecting directly with supporters.

Obama, on the other hand, brought excitement to the grassroots approach. To him, it was important to go straight to the people, not the media, and the Internet served as a key player in helping him do so.

Will TV ads (and traditional media) become obsolete?

The recent hype around Obama’s use of online and social technologies makes this question seem more real then ever – will TV ads become obsolete in future elections, being replaced solely by online initiatives? While some think yes, a few of the panelists surfaced an interesting perspective – offline ads help drive people online.

Take a look at the sheer numbers – TV ads are not becoming irrelevant anytime soon, and candidates are still focusing heavily on paid advertising (in addition to his online initiatives, Obama also bought half-hour primetime segments on CBS and NBC less than a week before the general election, for example). TV ads may be diminishing in importance, but it will be a long time before they completely go away. However, the panelists pointed out that now, we are seeing more of an online/offline plan. Online and social technology and traditional media serve completely different purposes – the Internet is used to activate the base and raise funds, then the money raised is being used to get people sitting at home on their couches to go online. It is now vital to synchronize both and integrate into one solid campaign.

Looking ahead to 2012/16

During the conference, one panelist made the bold claim that by 2016, campaigns will no longer exist in brick and mortar buildings; instead, they will exist solely online. Though traditional advertising will still play a dire role in campaigns, social media will become increasingly important to candidates seeking election as it becomes more mainstream. Due to both advances in technology and a growing number of media outlets for people to choose from, it will become vital for candidates to have a short, buttoned-up message.

Moving forward, Presidential candidates won’t be the only ones to use social media in campaigns; candidates at the local level will begin to jump on board as well. Campaigning via social media is cheaper, more effective, and easier to mobilize a core group of constituents to act.

Last, technological advances like TiVo and XM Radio have empowered consumers to choose what information they want to receive. Often, the casual constituent (or as Joel Benenson calls them, the “Up-for-Grabs” voter) doesn’t hear political messages via TV and radio ads; they hear about them through YouTube videos or e-mails and SMS videos forwarded by their friends. It is now important for candidates to broadcast their message across as many different channels, in as many different ways as possible to reach that casual constituent.

Anyone who has spent any time reading blogs, news sites and forums knows how often the conversations on these sites degrade into name-calling, insults, accusations, and generally uncivil discourse. The cause of this incivility is widely written and pondered about; I personally believe that the combination of anonymity and the platform provided by the Internet causes people to ignore the decency “filters” they use in everyday life. Real-life social settings carry the threat of repercussion or scorn by your peers if one says something distasteful – not so on the Internet.

I spoke to Jonathan Martin of Politico.com about this at the Politico 2008 Election Conference last Saturday and he mentioned that the Politico editorial staff was confronting this exact issue. As the political fervor increased during the 2008 election, the quality of the comments on Politico’s blogs dropped sharply; readers started attacking the candidates, impugning the writers, and insulting each other’s intelligence. The editors were left wondering; what balance should they strike between allowing the community members to speak their minds and preserving the civility of the conversations.

Politico is not the only publisher facing this issue. Sites have taken various steps to combat the problem: some have banned posting of comments, some require registration and identity confirmation (on the hope that writers will be more civil if it can be tied back to them), and some, like Politico, have no restrictions and let people write what they will. The decision to restrict commenting is especially difficult for journalistic sites, since they exist to disseminate information and foster discussion – not to stifle it.

However, this problem also presents an issue for any company that provides an online forum for its customers. Are you a technology company with an online support forum, a social networking site, or a blog? How do you decide what should be allowed and what “crosses the line”. What do you do when someone writes something negative about your company, in a negative tone (as opposed to a legitimate negative review/experience)? Do you remove it and risk being attacked for censoring criticism, or do you leave it up and allow the quality of the forum to degrade.

There are no simple answers to any of these questions, and the best way to protect yourself and your company from an awkward situation or public relations crisis is to formulate a comprehensive policy before the issues arise. Create a registration process and lay out exactly what you expect from forum members; continually monitor the forums and moderate comments or posts that violate the decency rules; and finally, apply the rules fairly and firmly across the entire community – this consistency will help reinforce the standards across the community and protect you from being accused of censoring posts later on.

As for Politico; they have decided, after much internal debate, to leave the comments unmoderated.

By now, most people in the online world are aware of the recent “fiasco” surround Motrin’s new online ad about mothers who carry their babies on a continual basis. Last Friday, Motrin posted an ad on their Web site featuring the voice of a young mother talking about the pain caused by carrying her baby in a pouch or sling. It was quickly noticed by mommy bloggers who immediately started tweeting and blogging about it, spreading the word throughout the community. The first Tweet on the subject was posted on Saturday evening, and within a few hours angry moms made hundreds of posts on the topic – all conveniently aggregated by the #MotrinMoms hashtag. The mothers were angered for several reasons including:

• The implication that baby-carrying is a fashion and that the mother’s who do it are doing so to look “like an official mom.”
• The trivialization of baby-carrying: The ad repeatedly refers to the “supposed” benefit of carrying your baby as opposed the documented and widely accepted belief.
• That mothers who carry their babies look “crazy.”

Plenty of other bloggers have written about this topic, including Peter Shankman and Lisa Belkin, and their posts have covered much of what Motrin did wrong here. Personally, my biggest problem with the ad is how poorly written it is; in addition to being offensive to many mothers, the language is poorly chosen and does not make much sense, nor does it reach a real point. However, I think there is one aspect that hasn’t been fully addressed: the lack of integration of marketing, PR, and communications professionals into the social networks they are targeting.

As I watched the Motrin controversy unfold most of the day Sunday, one thing became apparent to me: Motrin representatives were nowhere to be found. Not only did the Motrin response not come until the end of the day on Monday, but the ad wasn’t even pulled off the site until Monday afternoon. To me, this says that nobody from the Motrin PR/marketing team (or their agency) was actively engaging the Twitter community – if they had been they would have seen the controversy unfolding much earlier, and been able to respond faster. As the use of social networks in PR campaigns has grown more accepted, the number of campaigns has dramatically increased, as have the number of campaigns being run by people who are not a part of, and do not understand, the networks they are targeting. Too many companies simply log on to Twitter, create an account, post a couple Tweets, and think that they are done.

A truly effective social media campaign requires that the people running it are actually a part of the community they are working with. The entire Digital Lifestyle Team here at Zeno manage their own blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Digg accounts – and use them everyday. This allows us to stay connected and to better understand the communities we work with – this also allows us to identify and confront issues before they grow into something biger. In the last three months alone, I can count at least five instances where we found blogs or tweets where the author had complained about an issue with a client’s product – we immediately contacted our client’s customer service team and directed them to the author and were able to resolve the situation before most of the community were aware of the problem.

Hopefully, as social media becomes more engrained in our profession, we will see more people truly integrate themselves with the communities, instead of doing the bare minimum. Unfortunately, it may take several more high profile incidents like MotrinMoms for companies (and agencies) to realize the benefit of using people who truly understand and are part of these networks.

For a great idea on how to introduce your office to some of the social media tools we use everyday, check out Andrea Nowack’s post on her “Social Media Scavenger Hunt”

As a member of the Zeno Group Digital Lifestyle team, I feel that it is my duty to help engrain social media into our everyday PR lifestyle. So, for this past week’s Zeno LA “Happy Half-Hour Friday,” it was my turn to put my party-planner hat on, creating our first ever Social Media Scavenger Hunt! I think the digital lifestyle team was a little more excited about this than, say, our business manager, but overall the event was a great success.

The scavenger hunt featured several different social networking tools (Facebook, Digg and Twitter, to name a few) and called for participants to not only learn about them, but take the extra step and interact with each other using these tools. For example:
1) Sign into Twitter and create a Tweet using the #ZenoLA hashtag.
2) Now, respond to one Tweet that another Zeno LA employee posted.
3) Post an insightful comment on one of your favorite PR blogs. Which blog did you choose to comment on?

Of course, this was not meant to be a full training on all the social media tools available, but rather a fun way to expose the office to some of the new tools and apps available. (For example, most PR professionals know about Twitter, but many might not be aware of the long – and growing – list of apps that are available for it).

Broadening the scope of this post a bit, we are entering into an era where it is important for everyone in PR to at least be familiar with the basic social media and networking tools. By now, many PR professionals are aware of the ‘biggies’ (i.e., what they should pay attention to), but many have not taken the time to actually learn about and understand them (let alone start using them). Simply creating a Twitter ID and tweeting once or twice isn’t enough anymore; smart PR people should take it one step further and engage with the community on a regular basis, especially if it’s something that might make sense for a client down the road. At the same time, it’s okay to focus your attention on a select number of tools after you’ve explored all of the options. If you try Friendster but realize, “hey, maybe this one isn’t for me,” that’s okay! At least you took the time to figure it out.

On a different note, I encourage you to implement a social media scavenger hunt in your own office and share the results in the comments section below!

Whenever I was asked the question “Who would you most like to have lunch with” in elementary school essays, my default answer was Steven Spielberg (what 10-year-old child aspires to have lunch with a popular film director over Jonathan Taylor Thomas, I do not know, but apparently I did). Fifteen years later, if you asked my now more grown-up and professional self the same question, I’d have to say Google’s Marissa Mayer. Hands Down.

On Tuesday, FastCompany’s Saabira Chaudhuri published an article on the “Most Influential Women in Web 2.0” (which, of course, includes Ms. Mayer). Though the article picked up a lot of heat throughout the blogosphere, with some calling the author “sexist” for not also including men, I believe it’s about time women are recognized for their great achievements in Web 2.0.

From Arianna Huffington who created what is now the most popular blog on the Web, Huffington Post, to Ning’s Gina Bianchini, the outstanding women featured in this article have all made great strides online during a time when women are finally beginning to put the “housewife in the kitchen” stereotype behind them. Truth be told, it can be fairly intimidating competing and interacting with the “big boys” online. These women offer great advice, such as “you need to stick your neck out there and just do it in order to be successful.” (Cyan Banister).

In a traditionally male-dominated industry, it is nice to read about and celebrate the achievements of women who have made great strides in the online environment. As Marissa recommends, it’s important for women to find a company that fosters “an environment where people will invest in you.” I’ve found this to be so true and important to my growth as a digital media professional. For me, with Google and Marissa as examples, nothing is impossible.

Photo Credit: dfarber on Flickr

At PR Week’s “The Next Conference” next Wednesday in New York, Peter Kim, a former Forrester analyst, is moderating a panel titled, “The Next Digital Era” featuring Steve Rubel from Edelman Digital, Mark Donovan from comScore, and Tom Arrix from Facebook. Kim invited his blog readers to provide input for the panel. One of his questions included, “What’s next for the communications industry?” Below are my thoughts:

Thomas Friedman of The New York Times says we live in a world that’s “Hot, Flat and Crowded.” He might as well be describing the multitude of stagnant organizations that are still hesitant to integrate social platforms and new media strategies in their PR and marketing campaigns. They sit in a smog of inaction, unable to see the fresh air within reach. Alternative communications fuels such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Digg are already helping to eliminate corporate dependence on ink.

What’s next in communications is undoubtedly clear for those socially aware in the current media environment. Communications policy should be based on driving conversation and consumer engagement; rather than one-way vehicles that many organizations exclusively pursue on the congested road to market leadership. National media outlets and mainstream pursuits are still important, but niche communities and micro-platforms will increasingly receive outreach investment from smart PR professionals on behalf of their cost-conscious clients.

The social trends and behavioral shifts happening now will continue to shape what’s next … The availability of effective direct-to-consumer social channels, the accelerating transition from print to online, the growing adoption of social media among all demographics, the rise of the constantly connected consumer are moving all communicators to a massroots marketing era where brands are the broadcasters (think Blendtec YouTube channel). “Marketers as media” will be the norm rather than the exception in communications efforts moving forward. We may not all have the money for a 30-minute spot on multiple network TV channels, but anyone can broadcast to the world in minutes – whether online or on mobile (live video on mobile phones will be the shiny new 2009 car in the ever-expanding communications garage).

How powerful can a “marketers as media” approach be in an increasingly Internet-driven society and digital culture? Just last week, one man who established himself as a brand, spoke directly to his customers and enlisted the power of social communication became President of his industry.

One of the greatest challenges facing groups – from companies, to non-profits, to governments, to school clubs – is how to effectively inform and mobilize their members, particularly when they are large. Over the last two years, we have seen the emergence of Twitter as a resource for doing so – and with it, growing adoption by a variety of organizations.

During the recent election, we saw perhaps the most effective use of Twitter, to date, by the Obama campaign. By consistently putting out updates and calling his supporters to action, Barack Obama managed to become the single most followed person on Twitter, with more than 125,000 followers (almost twice the next largest crowd). Obama’s twitter profile is just one piece of his social media outreach, which includes pages on YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Ustream, and other social networking sites. This presence served him two crucial purposes – to build his following and provide engagement for them. Whenever there was a new rally to be watched online, reminders about important deadlines, or thank you’s to be given, the Obama web team pushed out a twitter update – instantly notifying all of his followers who could then immediately react.

While Twitter is extremely useful for building and mobilizing support, it also is useful for the simple dissemination of information. In Los Angeles County, the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) uses its Twitter profile to let riders know about service interruptions. By signing up with Twitter, riders can be instantly notified whenever the MTA announces a new service disruption – receiving text messages on their cell phones with the updates.

The Los Angeles Fire Department uses Twitter to post announcements about any major alerts and disseminate emergency information. Their use of Twitter also shows off another attractive feature– integration with RSS. Since Twitter uses RSS for its distribution, it can also read existing RSS feeds, which can be used to generate new posts. In the LAFD’s case, they simply linked an account to an existing RSS system, giving Los Angelinos another way to follow them and get updates.

This brings up a crucial question: Why Twitter? There are plenty of ways to disseminate information (for instance, my college campus subscribed to an emergency text messaging service where they could send alerts out to everyone who had signed up for it), so what is the particular appeal of Twitter? I see the answer as being three fold: It has a built in user base, it’s simple to work with and, most importantly, its free! Combined with the universal architecture (it uses RSS Feeds) and customizability (you can brand your page however you like) it provides the simplest, most efficient, and most cost effective solution for almost any organization.

If you haven’t already seen or tried twitter, hop on over to http://www.twitter.com and check it out – I’m sure you can find someone interesting you’d like to follow.

o   Search through Twitter’s archives

o   A recap of some of the best Twitter tools

o   Follow me (@alexlmiller), or other members (@NickMendoza, @AndreaNowack) of the Zeno Group Digital Lifestyle Team, on Twitter