Conversational Media Marketing

Yesterday, I read that December marks five years that Top Rank Marketing's Lee Odden has been at the business of blogging. (Congrats Lee!)

That post jogged my memory and caused me to realize that this month marks my fifth year as well. I started in December 2003 using a Typepad blog for the Internet marketing consultancy I owned at the time, Radiant Marketing Group.

Blogging has not only been a game-changer for me, but a life-changer as well. It's led to a career in Internet marketing, blog and social media consulting, a book (and another to be published in 2009) and the opportunity to serve as president of IBNMA.

More importantly, it's led to the development of a network of friends and connections that literally spans the globe. For a country boy who grew up at Rural Route 1, Hickory, Mississippi, that ain't too bad. Not bad at all.

Unlike Lee and many other veteran bloggers from the class of 2003 and 2004, my blogging path has been a bit eclectic (shall we say even "schizophrenic") While Lee, Toby Bloomberg, Yvonne DiVita, Denise Wakeman, Wayne Hurlbert and many others have "plowed the same field" on one blog for years, I've had the privilege to ply my trade at quite a number:

• Radiant Marketing Group (no longer live)
• Weblogs Inc
• Creative Weblogging
• Allbusiness.com
• Blogging Systems (now Respond Media)
• Active Rain
• Strategic Business Blogging (no longer live)
• Bizzuka
• MarketingProfs Daily Fix
• and this blog, Conversational Media Marketing

IOWs, just about everyone but b5media. Like I said, a bit schizo! :-) (Chalk it up to a short attention span.)

If I had more time today, I'd create a list of favorite posts, events, etc. Unfortunately, my day job won't allow and, besides, we're about to close shop for the day and my wife and I are headed to celebrate the holiday with relatives.

To my fellow veteran business bloggers who have persevered over the years, here's to you. May blogging be very good to us in 2009 and bring us all continued business and personal success.

I was apprised of the latest episode of "As the Web Turns" today by my boss who , "I can't believe you're not weighing in on this."  

If you've yet to read Joe Pulizzi's you should because it contains some eye-opening predictions from leading marketing professionals.

While, as you might expect, there is a wide range and divergence of opinion, some themes emerge.

1. Advertising will gradually be replaced by information.
2. Content and conversational marketing strategies will converge.
3. Social media marketing will continue to gain acceptance

Let's take these one at a time.

Recently, a co-worker's husband opened a new franchise restaurant and she asked me about ways to use social media to help build awareness. Literally, the first thought that came to mind was to go to Twitter and crowdsource the answer. So I did, asking fellow twits to finish this sentence, "If I were a restaurant, I would use Twitter to...."

"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus," said Francis Church, and I know of at least two of his elves: Frances Flynn Thorsen, Community Manager at Trulia, Lee Odden, CEO of Top Rank Online Marketing.and the Blog Squad's .

Fran surprised me (pleasantly) by inclusion as one of the Top Ten Real Estate Speakers of 2009 which, considering that I'm not a Realtor, is a pretty phenomenal thing if you think about it. I join the likes of Bernice Ross, Ilyce Glink and Jeff Turner. It's an esteemed group to be sure.

Here is Fran's rationale...

A second present, one received by not only myself, but Bizzuka CEO John Munsell, is inclusion by Top Rank Marketing's Lee Odden on a list called Best Podcasts on Social Media for Bizzuka's User Friendly Thinking Radio show which airs every Friday at noon central on Blog Talk Radio. (BTW, though I'd never come right out and ask you to do it, there is the option to vote for your favorite, uh-hum.)

Last but not least, Denise nominated me for a Shorty Award. (And I think she meant the one for micro-content, not actual height. Considering I'm only 5'8" and that's on a good day, I suppose it's reasonable to think she could have meant it either way. :->)

Though there's a good likelyhood I'll see coal in my stocking come Christmas morning, these are serendipities I didn't expect. On that other hand, maybe I've been better this year than I thought. If that's not the case, don't tell Fran, Lee or Denise please.

A recent post by my good friend *John Jantsch asserts that "social media is a tool, it's not a religion, there are no real rules and we are experimenting every day."

At "Bizzuka Labs," we're creating a new social media marketing brand called User Friendly Thinking. While still in the process of clarifying the brand message, essentially it's a place where "technology and creativity intersect."

We refer to User Friendly Thinking as a "social media" brand, mainly because that's the channel through which it's being deployed.

Currently we offer:

UserFriendlyThinking.com
We're "eating our own dogfood" and have built a multi-blog, multi-author site using our own blog component, which is part of our overall CMS. While it's a work in progress, and certainly not on par with WordPress, Movable Type or WordFrame, we're rather proud of it. For the time being, contributors are members of the Bizzuka staff. We plan to invite outside contributors in the not-too-distant future.

User Friendly Thinking Radio
Every Friday at noon central we interview social media movers-and-shakers. Past guests have included Jason Falls, Ben McConnell, Anita Campbell, Charlene Li, Mack Collier, Toby Bloomberg as well as an assortment of Web designers, developers and our own staff.  The show is beginning to catch on too. Last week's episode with Mack was one In the near future our guest will include Wayne Hurlbert, John Jantsch and Michelle Miller among others.


This was a group started by our SVP of Global Sales and Business Development, Charles Lauller. Currently, it numbers some 167 members and growing everyday. We are getting our share of spammers though and figuring out ways to deal with it. We'd like to invite you to join if you're interested.

Plans for the future include a Twitter handle, video channel, Facebook group and online community.

The endgame here is to use UFT as a social media and content marketing "magnet" to introduce Bizzuka to a wider audience, but do so by focusing on the topics of Web design, development, content management and marketing rather than on Bizzuka itself.

As you can see from the UFT site, references to Bizzuka are minimal and non-invasive. We plan to keep it that way. It's "marketing by participation" that will drive the brand, not "hey, over here, look at us!!!!" forms of interruption.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this idea along with any advice you'd care to share. It's an experiment and we can use all the input we can get. Do you think we're on the right track? What suggestions would you have for future development?

I've created an online community on this blog called Friends of CMM (which I invite you to join btw), which includes a couple of widgets from Google , the new service that enables any Web site to have a social component.

I've also deployed SixApart's new social component, Typepad Connect, which is a mashup of threaded Gravatar-style comments, Typepad Profiles and their anti-spam application. Interestingly, the app is available for use on a number of blog platforms, including WordPress and Blogger.

The ability to incorporate these and other open-source applications further reinforces the point that blogs can serve as a social media base of operations from which users can foray into other socnets like Facebook and Twitter.

Like Google says, these apps mean "more people engaging more deeply with your website -- and with each other."

Lately, I've been giving more attention to the use of wikis for networking collaboratively, having started three, including the What's Working in Social Media one I mentioned yesterday. The other two are private, one related to something we're doing at Bizzuka, and one for a group I've been invited to be part of.

Part of the reason I'm doing this is for research on my upcoming book on social media marketing, but mostly its because I want to embrace the power of social networking in its most collaborative form to date, a wiki. A number of do-it-yourself wiki platforms are available, but I favor WetPaint for its ease of use.

I read an excerpt from Clay Shirky's new book Here Comes Everybody that said, "We are living in the middle of a remarkable increase in our ability to share, to cooperate with one another, and to take collective action. These changes will transform the world everywhere groups of people come together to accomplish something."

Thanks to tools like wikis, the technological barriers to co-creation, collaboration and change have largely been eliminated. The one barrier that remains is human being's willingness to actively engage. The 90-9-1 rule still seems to be in effect and our reluctance to participate has to be overcome. Otherwise, the influence remains in the hands of a relative few.

A great resource for better understanding the power of wikis to foster social change is a PDF entitled Working Wikily: How Networks are Changing Social Change, written by the Monitor Institute. They've also created a blog by the same name.

Once again, let me invite you to join in participating on the What's Working wiki. The only way that site will have any real value is by virtue of the contributions of its members.

Hat tip to Connectedness

I've started a wiki called What's Working in Social Media to serve as a clearinghouse of information about what companies are doing in terms of their use of social media for marketing, customer service and business communications in general.

I'm looking for "real world" case studies, examples, stories and illustrations and welcome your participation.

Like I say on the wiki, "The days of 'touchy-feely, warm-and-fuzzy' thinking about social media marketing is over. The CEO wants to know if it has ROI potential and can positively effect the bottom line. Everyone from real estate agents to CMOs at F1000s are asking, 'Does it work? If so, how?'"

I'm using this as a research tool for my new book on social media marketing. In addition, I'm going to produce an ebook consisting of 101 examples, all of which will be drawn from the wiki (assuming I can get 101 from it). Attribution will of course be given to each contributor.

We currently have, at the time of this post, 60 members and I welcome your participation. Click here to sign up.