Conversational Media Marketing

You think I stuffed enough keywords into that title?! 

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.

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?

MarketingVox reports Compete.com's November statistics Facebook is rapidly closing the gap with US social network leader MySpace. In a separate news item, MarketingVox also reports that Google's , now in beta, is hot on Facebook's tail. Looks like a real race to the finish to me!

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.

I enjoyed so very much having the opportunity to keynote at last week's REBarcamp Houston. I want to pass along my thanks to Michael Price, President of ML Broadcast, for putting it together. (Oh, and Mike, the receipts are coming!)

Here are some video and photos of the event for your enjoyment:

Email Insider just done with several demographic groups age 34 and under regarding their channel preferences for receiving and/or being influenced by promotional messages.

The four groups were:

• Teens: 15-17 years old, still in high school
• College students: 18-24 year olds still in school
• Wired: young males, post-college between the ages of 18 and 34 years old, without kids. They are employed full-time or self-employed, have a good income — an annual household income of at least $35K
• Young homemakers: females, between the ages of 18 and 34 years old, who consider “homemaker” to be their primary occupation

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.

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've noticed a thread that seems to run through the social web -- an emphasis on the use of personal branding as a way to build the associated company brand.

There are a number of examples:

• Paul Dunay, Director of Global Field Marketing at BearingPoint (see conversation I had with Paul below)
• Chris Brogan, VP of Strategy and Technology at CrossTech Media
• Jason Falls, Director of Social Media at Doe-Anderson, a leading Louisville, KY advertising agency
• Jeremiah Owyang, Peter Kim, Charlene Li of Forrester fame (Peter and Charlene are no longer associated with Forrester, but you get my point)

Perhaps the way to think of these people is as spokespersons for their company.