Conversational Media Marketing

A couple of weeks ago John Jantsch, the Duct Tape Marketing guy, tagged me along with a number of others in a note saying that he had written a blog post outlining what he referred to as his "intra-daily, daily, weekly and monthly social media routine or system" and suggested that we follow suit. He said he would hook them all together to create an "at this moment" guide.

My initial reaction was, "But, John, I don't have a system!" I tend to be more or less extemporaneous, spur of the moment in my social media interactions via Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. (Obsessive might be an even more apt description.) Blogging, another part of my "routine," is often catch as catch can. Unlike John, I am decidedly not a systems-oriented thinker.

The more I thought about it the more I realized the need to deploy such a system, if for no other reason than to find a way to better manage the flow of all this stuff and not allow it to dominate my day. Plus, John asked me to participate and I want to honor his request.

So, what follows is my newly-ordained, shiny, brand-spanking new car smell social media system.

(Before we get to that, allow me ask the question that is the title of this post, do you have a social media system? If so, please leave a comment briefly outlining what it is. Or, better yet, write a post of your own and leave a comment with the link.)

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 only heard this meme a few times and I'm already sick of it, blogging is dead. Give me a break. Blogging is no more dead than email, which has also had its share of doomsayers. Blogging is not dead, it has merely found its place in the grand scheme of all things social media.

A little history lesson. In 2003, the year I started blogging, it was about the only game in town social media speaking, at least where business was concerned. And it wasn't until 2005 when Business Week did their cover story on blogging that the business world really even took note. Up to that point, it was a curiosity that only early adopters were making use of, more or less.

You have only to read the books on blogging published around that time to see what I mean. (Note: Until 2005 there were none that dealt strictly with business applications.)

So, tell me, how only three years later, does anyone have the temerity to say that blogging's future is dismal and that, rather than start a blog, one should invest their time on Facebook, Twitter and other social applications? *Balderdash!

(A word about email. It's still the #1 Internet activity and than any other form. And those numbers continue to rise. Email dead. Yea, right.)

Here are a list of good reasons why blogging's future is bright.

Blogs, though old (relatively speaking) are new again. They have morphed into: a) Lightweight CMS platforms, are b) Social media headquarters, c) serve as vehicles for content marketing, d) are great niche market penetration tools, and e) search engine magnets.

I've been given the opportunity to present at a two-day virtual summit on conversational media marketing sponsored by BrightTALK that starts today.

Here's the blurb...

The message for marketers is loud and clear: social media will change your business. Few years ago, social media was a nice addition to a marketing plan – nowadays it is an essential part of the marketing mix and it is likely to overtake traditional marketing channels very soon. According to a TWI study, conversational marketing will surpass traditional marketing by 2012.

To address the challenges and primarily the opportunities that come with conversational marketing and social media, BrightTALK is organizing an all-day online summit on conversational marketing on November 24. There is no charge for attendance.

The summit will be available live on November 24-25. This is where you can also find the most up-to-date schedule.

The following presenters will discuss the use of Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, social media, search marketing, corporate blogging, reaching out youth and much more.

• Bill Hartzer, search engine marketing manager at Vizion Interactive
• Chris Kenton, CEO of SocialRep
• Dave Evans, CEO of Digital Voodoo
• Edward Weatherall, managing director at Concept Ltd
• Ian Lurie, president of Portent Interactive
• Jerry Hart, principal and vice president of sales and marketing for Power to be Found
• Jennifer Carole, director of the worldwide teen lab at Alcatel-Lucent
• Kate Brodock, principal at The Other Side Group
• Linda Pophal, owner and CEO of Strategic Communications
• Loren McDonald, vice president of industry relations at Silverpop
• Malcolm Friedberg, marketing automation expert
• Mary Lou Roberts, instructor at Harvard Extension Program; author at DIY-Marketing
• Michael Kurtzman managing director of mobile advertising at Sybase 365
• Sundeep Kapur, online marketing strategist at www.emailyogi.com and NCR Corporation
• Will Schnabel, vice president of international markets at Silverpop

My presentation take place tomorrow, November 25, from 10-11 a.m.

For those who'd like to learn more, here's a link to the press release. Visit the BrightTALK Web site to see the list of topics.

A question was asked in the LinkedIn bloggers group, "Do you have a system for creating blog post titles? If so, what is it?"

I responded with this...

My philosophy is that we speak to two audiences with our blog, one human and one machine (i.e., search engines). As such, the post titles have to make sense to both. Creating titles that do the job well is both art and science. And, of course, it depends on whether we really care about reaching either audience, or both as the case may be.

My procedure is normally to incorporate a keyword or keyword phrase into the post title and to frontload it if at all possible. I then repeat those keywords in the post itself a couple of times, depending on the length of the post. Obviously, that's in an effort to appeal to Google. As you are aware, the post title is turned into an HTML title tag, at least in the most popularly used blog platforms. That's important from an SEO perspective.

The art then is to wrap a sentence or phrase around those keywords that make sense to the human reader. I've almost completely abandoned writing "catchy" titles in favor of ones that are more descriptive of the topic at hand. I'll leave the catchy titles to the likes of Seth Godin. He already has plenty of traffic. Me, I need pagerank.

Now, let's suppose one of my posts returns well for someone searching a particular keyword. It increases the likelyhood that one they're looking for and what I'm talking about are going to be a better match. What I don't need is a majority of my traffic hitting the site, then quickly leaving. Not only that, but using a more descriptive title will help the reader vet whether the post is worth their time to begin with.

For example, in this post, , I opted for descriptive and use of frontloaded keywords. I'd like to think the last phrase is descriptive enough for human readers to see where I'm going with it.

Conversely, in this post, A list of things to do before I die , I went for catchy. The former was intended to be more polemic and informative. The latter was a bit more personal.

Anyway, long answer, which I hope made sense.

• Two audiences, humans and machines
• Have to appeal to both
• Use fron-tloaded keywords in combination with descriptive titles
• Leave the catchy stuff to bloggers who can afford the luxury

I'm a member of the LinkedIn Bloggers group where this question was recently asked, "What do you think? Is commenting (on blogs) a dying art?" The blogger referenced this post by a fellow member.

I responded by suggesting the real issue, and one us long-time bloggers may have trouble adjusting to, is the fact that there are now so many other places to comment than a few years ago. For example, I had a Twitter exchange with someone yesterday who read my latest post. He made several comments, none of which ended up on my blog.

I recall in September 2005 following Katrina's landfall doing nothing but blogging about the storm and issues related to it for two solid weeks. I even started a blog to post about Katrina-related jobs. That was then, this is now.

Gustav brought with it many more options to keep friends and family updated about our status or for use in sharing news about disaster response.

• FEMA widget - Note the widget in the sidebar. That's something Homeland Security put together.
• Twitter - Many people used Twitter to and . (Ready.gov also used .)
• Utterz - Knowing I'd have limited internet access I broadcast messages to Utterz via my cellphone.
• Ning - This easy-to-use social network platform was used to share information about Gustav.
• Social bookmarks - The Weather Channel uses social bookmarking with alerts on its site.
• RSS feeds - TWC also uses for updates. (So does Accuweather, and the NWS.)
• Blogs - All the major weather sites - Weather.com, Accuweather and Wunderground - have blogs.

Louisiana emergency preparedness sites still stuck on stupid Web 1.0

I was disappointed to see that none of Louisiana's emergency sites offered any type of social media tools. Not one! These include Gov. Jindal's office, the state's emergency site, Louisiana Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness, GetaGamePlan.org, Louisiana State Police, Louisiana Recovery Authority, Louisiana.gov, or the American Red Cross, Baton Rouge chapter.

There's no excuse for this in my opinion, not when so many options abound. I mean, heavens, add RSS feeds at least. The Get a Game Plan site should absolutely offer these. It's not like Gov. Jindal doesn't know about social media tools either as he used a number of them during his campaign.

With hurricane season still heavy upon us, unfortunately there will likely be other opportunities for social media technologies to be utilized for emergency response, news and status updates. I'm glad they exist, for that reason and many others.

I'm going to be speaking at BlogWorld and New Media Expo in Vegas, September 20-21. My presentation is "Conversations Create Clients: How to turn strangers into friends and friends into enemies customers."

I'm on the bleeding edge track, which is cool. I've never considered myself as "bleedging edge." (Bad to the bone, yes; bleeding edge, no.)

If you're unfamiliar with BlogWorld, it's like Disney World, only better. First, it's in Vegas and, well, that's kind of Disney for adults. The conference is geared toward anyone who participates in blogging, podcasting and social media at any level, whether "amateur" or "professional."

We're officially announcing the relaunch of the International Blogging and New Media Association today. This has been long in coming and I'm elated to see the day finally arrive.

Check out the press release and the blog post. If you feel so inclined, please help us spread the message.

One more thing...

I know there may be talk about how the executive board is comprised only of men, and middle-aged white men at that. And I understand. I can promise you the Advisory Council, which we will announce next week, is far from that. It's a diverse group in many respects as you will see.

Again, help us spread the word, the IBNMA is back Jack!