Conversational Media Marketing

You think I stuffed enough keywords into that title?! 

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."

In 2006, well-known Web usability expert Jakob Neilsen, developed the Community Participation Pyramid, otherwise known as the 90-9-1 principle, which states...

Some time ago I mentioned being selected, along with some 274 others, to participate in the sequel to the wildly successful The Age of Conversation. The sequel is something Todd Andrlik called "the most massive authorship undertaking in history. We’re talking Guinness Book baby!"Needless to say, I was more than happy to participate.

The book officially launches tomorrow today, Wednesday, October 29, and is available for purchase at Lulu.com. The goal is to raise over $15K for charity. Why don't you be one of the first to pick up a copy.

Following is a tidbit of my contribution to the book...

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.

We interviewed Jason Falls, Director of Social Media at Doe-Anderson, a Louisville, Ky-based brand-building agency, on our User Friendly Thinking (formerly known as Bizzuka Buzz) Blog Talk Radio show today.

Jason is better known though as the author of Social Media Explorer blog. He literally came out of nowhere less than a year ago and has earned a place of notoriety among business and social media bloggers. (Read his blog and you'll understand why.)

We talked about social media and its implications where advertising, marketing, public relations and journalism are concerned. (Plus, a bit of conversation about its application to small business as well.) We dealt with the topic of personal branding to some extent as well.

The program ran past the 30-minute timeframe and we talked for over an hour. It was a great conversation and I'd encourage you to take some time to listen when you can.

Today, I want to share a few secrets I've learned along the way that may help you to become a more successful business blogger.

(OK, so they're not really "secrets." In fact, they've become pretty well-established business blogging best practices. Of course, if you don't already know them, then perhaps secrets they are. Now that I've cleared that up, uh-hum, on to our program.)

I finished reading Groundswell last night, the book co-authored by Forrester analyst Josh Bernoff and former analyst Charlene Li. I have to say it's one of the most important books on the subject of social media that I've read this year.

Research - The opinions shared, suggestions made and advice given are based on solid research. What else would you expect from Forrester, right? Everything is well-documented and appended.

Case studies - Charlene and Josh support the research with real world examples showing how organizations both in the for-profit and non-profit sectors are using the tools of social media to accomplish marketing and business communication purposes. They showcase larger organizations like Dell, Best Buy and M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, but do include a few references to small business.

Writing - The book is very well-written. Again, you'd expect no less from Forrester analysts.

I've asked that question a couple of times on Twitter and received only , that from Amanda Chapel who said, "Conversational Media ran out of things to talk about." Funny.

Seriously, the site, which was a staple on my blog reading list, was there, then it was gone, replaced by a splog or some such. (That's if you use the "www." Without it, the browser returns a dead link altogether.)

Not only was the site a daily digest of the best posts by some of the best social media bloggers - the Crème de la Crème - on occasion they used my stuff!   

I assumed the domain got hijacked, but did a whois query and it look as if the domain was created in September of 2007 and wasn't up for renewal until 2012.

If you happen to know, please leave a comment. Thanks.