With the events unfolding in Iran over the past few days, there is no shortage of breathless commentary on the role of social media in what some will certainly dub Revolution 2.0. While following these events very closely as a social media advocate, I have to say that I resonate far more with the social story that is emerging than the media story. That’s not to say that the ways we’re seeing sites like Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and Facebook being used to galvanize Iranian protesters and inform the world is not compelling. But this stunning showcase of social technology would not exist without the profound depth of bravery, determination and community shown by so many ordinary Iranians.

Although it’s impossible at this point to know the full impact technology is having on events on the ground in Iran, it’s obvious social media is bringing a far more compelling picture of what’s happening to anyone who wants to witness it, and that alone is revolutionary. While our major news networks perform the ponderous work of compiling and verifying a thin stream of facts according to the traditional time line of the 6am/6pm/10pm news cycle, bloggers and protesters are creating a real-time stream of first hand accounts of events as they happen. The beauty and the danger of this phenomenon is the heightened sense of involvement—that this is not only a domestic political event, but a profound and universal drama in which we all have a stake. By retweeting proxy IPs that Iranians reporting from the street can hop to evade network clampdowns, or joining a Denial of Service attack against the Web sites of the Iranian state, people all over the world are, in a way made possible only by technology, global participants in local events.

But to elevate this fascination with the growing power of social technology misses the most important point. Technology does not provide the passion for tens of thousands of people in Tehran to take to their rooftops and shout down a corrupt government. Technology does not draw hundreds of thousands of housewives, students and shopkeepers into the streets to face down frightening attacks by baton-wielding storm-troopers on motorbikes. Technology does not supply the courage for an unprotected crowd to stand in the face of sniping fire and hold their ground, and it does not provide the compassion of a crowd that protects a captured thug from violent reprisals. A country awash in social media technology is no guarantee of such monumental spirit shown by ordinary men and women in Iran today, resonating with one voice against a government that has failed them. Praising the technology is like celebrating the bullhorn rather than the message it carries.

I suspect when all is said and done we’ll find that as crucial as technology has been as a tactical aid for the early protests in Iran, the greater impact is the way the raw story from the streets became a universal story that vastly enlarged the community of protest, providing validation, and perhaps galvanizing the courage of those standing in the street, while reminding the rest of the world what it looks like to stand up against tyranny. As the Iranian government cracks down more aggressively on the vulnerable tools of social networking, it will be only that fabric of community and purpose that remains to bind them. There is no technology that can replace that.

{ 2 comments }

Continuing the thread of what my partners and customers are doing that’s worth noting…

For the past year or so, I’ve participated in Bill Johnston’s Online Community Roundtables here in the Bay Area. The roundtables are some of the most engaging and informative meetings around. The participants are a blend of corporate marketing practitioners and Web 2.0 experts, anchored by a number of local luminaries and veteran community managers. And I do mean veteran. At least one of the regulars goes back to the early days of The Well.

The style is driven by an ad-hoc agenda: before the roundtable starts, everyone has an opportunity to add a topic to the agenda on a first-come first-heard basis, with no product pitches or proselytizing. Nine out of ten topics are issues with serious depth and discussion, from community management and marketing to platform and technology challenges, and the mix of experience and point-of-view in the room always ensures insightful discussion. I’ve gained far more insight from discussions among practicing community managers than from the experts and luminaries that proliferate and pontificate online.

Next week I’m heading down to Mountain View to participate in the Online Community Unconference–an annual conference version of Bill’s local Roundtables, hosted by Forum One Communications. Just like the roundtables the mix and the open format are conducive to learning from peers who are dealing with the real day-to-day challenges of community development, management and marketing. I’m sure, just like the roundtables, there will be a great mix of marketing managers, veterans and luminaries, and I’m certain the dialog will be the most insightful fare around. Take a look at the session highlights from previous unconferences on Bill’s blog.

I very rarely pitch anything on my blog, but if you’re in the Bay Area and you’re involved in social media marketing, this is an event you shouldn’t miss. Registration is available online. The event is at the Computer History Museum in Mt. View.

{ 0 comments }

I‘m participating in a Webinar this afternoon hosted by my long-time friends and partners at Clickability. The Webinar is all about storytelling in the age of social media, or to be more pithy, how content is still king. This is hallowed ground for me. I got my degree in Creative Writing as an aspiring starving poet, but then became a journalist when I didn’t enjoy starving. My first startup was in Web-based publishing, and as a marketer I’ve leveraged my passion for writing to better understand the power of positioning and messaging. Today, SocialRep is all about gathering and making sense of consumer stories.

My perspective on content today is shaped by what’s happening to the structure of media. I’ve been hammering this concept of the media bubble and how it’s bursting, and content is one of the main issues at play. Think about the media structure we’ve grown up with: a monolithic media edifice in which a cohesive story–whether news, PR or advertising–is researched, baked and transmitted like a surging tide over the accepting audience. All of our business infrastructure is built around this edifice, rather than the customers who buy our products. Advertising isn’t about relationships with customers, it’s about relationships with media buyers and media channels. PR is about relationships with analysts and reporters. To the extent that we incorporate customers into the story, it’s either petri-dish research into demographics and psychographics, or convenient case studies that exemplify our storyline.

All of that is changing, for reasons I won’t rehash, but you can read about in the media bubble post. The point for businesses today is twofold: 1) barriers to business are reduced by technology and increasing global competition, which means more competition for customer attention, 2) big media is faltering, which means the channels for telling the story the way we’re all used to are narrowing.

The simple fact is that companies can no longer rely on getting their story out to consumers effectively through the old media channels. Getting your story out through social media is rapidly growing alternative, but it doesn’t function the way businesses are organized to operate. You can’t just bake a story and hit “send” and expect that consumers will digest it. They’re more likely to challenge it, and call BS on every little point of convenient spin you’ve so carefully crafted. Instead, companies need to live their stories, and they need to take ownership of their own storytelling.

I won’t take the wind out of the Webinar. We’ll be talking about content in the context of social media, including marketing and selling processes and of course, technology. Robert Carroll, VP of Marketing  from Clickability is hosting, and I’ll be joined by Sandy Carter, VP from IBM, and Eloqua’s CTO, Steven Woods. You can find a link to the Webinar, including on-demand viewing after today, at Clickability’s site.

Photo Credit:goldsardine

{ 1 comment }

Over the past couple of months, I’ve been heads down and out of sight–even off Twitter, gasp!–working on SocialRep and working for our customers. I’ve finally got a few moments to come up for air, and I want to write a few posts about some of the cool projects our customers are developing. You can take this as a disclaimer: I’m honored by the customers we’re working with and I’m excited about what they’re doing. I’m not wearing the hat of a reporter, but of a marketing exec, so take any comments I make about products and services in that light.

For today’s post, I want to highlight Creative Labs, one of the most prolifically innovative consumer electronic companies out there. In the early days of the desktop revolution, Creative developed the SoundBlaster, bringing high fidelity sound to what otherwise would be just computing machines with video. What’s multimedia without sound? Years later, before anyone heard of the iPod, Creative began developing MP3 players, like the Nomad and the Nomad Jukebox, which later evolved into the Zen that Creative still produces today. They have an incredibly broad product line of computer sound cards, headphones, MP3 players, pro audio equipment, video conferencing equipment, home audio devices to wirelessly join your computer and stereo, and the Vado line of pocket video cameras, the smallest HD cameras on the market. I’ve joked they should market themselves as the Willy Wonka of consumer electronics.

Creative is working incredibly hard to redefine the way they develop and market products, and I’ve had the great fortune of working them on some projects. One of the benefits, of course, is scoring some sample products, and I took home an armload of Creative products to play with. One product, which I’ve become addicted to is a high-end gaming headset with a noise canceling microphone. I can do Skype calls from the coffee roasters and no one can tell I’m not in my office. But the product I wanted to shamelessly shill today is their Vado HD, a tiny hi-def video camera that’s smaller than your wallet, but shoots an hour of high quality video. The uses for a blogger like me are obvious, promising the ability to shoot interviews and customer case studies with a device I can fit in a jacket pocket. (Now if only I could fit my production and editing partners in a pocket too…)

So I shot my first ready-for-YouTube video this weekend. Peter Byck, the CEO of Winery Exchange invited me up to his family’s ranch and winery at Paradise Ridge for his annual holiday campout. Up near the winery, they’ve partnered with local artists to provide a place to install large sculptures. There are some truly amazing pieces of art, many of which incorporate sound and interaction. One of those pieces I captured on hi-def video using the Vado HD.

I still have a lot to learn about using such a small camera correctly. Ideally, you want to capture a short piece in one take with no need to edit. When you do, you can literally just plug the camera into a USB port, use the popup video browser to find your clip, press the YouTube button and fill out your video data, and the next step is watching your uploaded video on the Web. Check out the clip in HD if you have a good connection.

As I mentioned, Creative is doing a lot of work on redefiining their marketing approach. Keep an eye out for some of their new programs and campaigns. I’ll post more about what Ican, when I can.

{ 0 comments }

I‘m doing a Webinar today on Surviving and Thriving in the Economic Downturn, along with Thor Muller from Get Satisfaction and Scott Wilder from Intuit, moderated by Bill Johnston from Forum One, who also manages the fantastic Online Community Unconference. Working on my thoughts around this topic has been a great opportunity to reflect on why SocialRep is still plugging along quite well, in the midst of all the economic doom and gloom.

There are a lot of factors at play. But when I stand back and think about the meta frame for why SocialRep is still tooling along instead of flaming out or getting pummeled, there’s a pattern that interests me. In Startup World, especially in the valley, the dominant imperative is speed. Organize quickly. Raise money. Get to market fast. Grow fast. Run, baby, run. But for us, the focus palpably shifted last August when we stopped chasing money to focus instead on customers and product quality. Sure, we’ve grown much slower, but today we have a much more solid product and a base of revenue, which is perfect for a slow economic environment.

In short, we’ve embraced the Tortoise. We’ve taken a long view of the market, and marshaled our resources to move deliberately and steadily, holding ourselves in check when hares seem to pop up and speed away in front of us. It’s nerve racking sometimes to see a new competitor jump up and sprint away, but by now we’ve seen a couple of those hares further down the road, flattened like roadkill.

What does it mean to Embrace the Tortoise? It means to find and focus on your vision, and find your own pace in the market by being true to your customers and your product. A long term vision is not just stringing short-term results together–if you’re always sprinting, you eventually run out of steam. You need a solid sense of direction you believe in enough to plod toward, without being driven to waste your energy every time a competitor makes a move. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

It also means to take a long-term view in understanding your market–and this is especially important in marketing and social media. If you want to make it further than the next turn in the road, you need some strategy to anticipate what’s beyond it. The best way to do that is to be a student of history, which is something in short supply in the marketing profession. I talk frequently about the historical context of the social media phenomenon and the bursting media bubble. If you want a synopsis, I wrote about here.

It’s been a busy few weeks, but I’m happy to say I’m finally circling back with Jonathan Knowles to continue the discussion on Social Media and Marketing ROI, and we’re launching a survey together to measure marketer’s experiences with social media metrics. If you’re a marketing professional, please join us and take the survey. We’ll provide the results to everyone who participates.

{ 1 comment }

A few weeks ago, my wife and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary. We were lucky enough to get away for a few days prior to our anniversary, but I wanted to do something special on our actual wedding date, which was mid-week this year. All I had in mind was a nice dinner in San Francisco, until I met Michael Hraba at the first SF Social Media Breakfast. Michael is a marketing consultant to hotels, and he encouraged me to think about doing a marketing event at Cavallo Point, a brand new resort right next to the Golden Gate on the historic grounds of Fort Baker. That sparked the idea of taking my wife away just a few miles from home, and launched what I’m certain will be our new anniversary tradition.

Since we would only be gone overnight, I didn’t need to tell my wife anything until the last moment. I set up a sleepover for my son at a schoolmate’s, booked a room and dinner reservation, and casually told my wife to pack for an overnight on the morning of our anniversary. After work, I picked up my wife and we drove 10 minutes to Cavallo, checked in to a breathtaking suite under the Golden Gate, and opened a bottle of champagne before the 101 commute was even underway.

I love to travel, but I have to say, local tourism has a big attraction for me now. We had none of the stress of dealing with major packing, or airports, or house- and pet-sitting. Everything–including our son–was only minutes away in case of an emergency. Instead of spending the better part of a day making flights and connections, we checked in and checked out to the rest of the world. And for a fraction of the cost of leaving town, we enjoyed a spectacular resort and an amazing dinner. The next day, although it was bittersweet to stay only one night, we shared a nice breakfast and slipped right back into our lives without the huge re-entry price you typically have to pay for being away. The unexpected result was the sense of relaxation you usually only get on the third or fourth day of vacation.

I suspect we’ll hear a lot more about local tourism as the recession grinds along. You’d be amazed how easy it is to get away for just a night during the week, and mid-week specials make it a steal, even for the best rooms. Not only is it a nice way to see home in a new light, the memory refreshes every time you drive past the places you visit as a “tourist”.

If you’re in the Bay Area, Cavallo is phenomenal–the food, the hospitality, the view–they’ve really made a magical place. It’s well worth such an easy trip.

{ 1 comment }

The second San Francisco Social Media breakfast was a great success, despite the competition with Web 2.0 down the street not to mention spring vacation for many people. Jonathan Knowles flew in from Toronto to join us in a discussion on Social Media Metrics, and as always he did not disappoint. Jonathan’s rare ability to bridge the gap between marketing and finance provided a lot of wit and wisdom for marketers struggling to justify an investment in social media. There were so many worthwhile takeaways, from insights into the mindset of the CFO to suggestions on how to frame marketing metrics for social media.

We’ll have video of the breakfast from MinerPro available shortly, and you can get some snippets of the discussion from the Twitter feed. We’ll be kicking off our book discussion of Jonathan’s Vulcans, Earthlings and Marketing ROI next week.

In the meantime, I’ll set the tone for the discussion by calling out one of the key insights from Jonathan’s talk. Jonathan pointed out the fact that ROI as a specific metric is a short-term measurement of efficiency. In the CFO’s mind, any time you discuss ROI, the financial assumption is that the expense and the resulting revenue occur in the same quarter. So when marketers use the term ROI in the context of social media, they’re explicitly limiting the frame of discussion to short-term revenue generation, taking off the table any longer benefits to brand equity, improvements in customer satisfaction, and long-term reduced costs of marketing.

As Jonathan pointed out, there are three domains in which CFOs measure value: Revenue, Growth and Risk (reduction). While there are some avenues to short-term revenue from social media campaigns, primarily in retail, for the vast majority of social media efforts today the real value will be seen in longer-term Growth and Risk Reduction. When, to a CFO’s ears, marketers clumsily speak about “ROI” as a catch-all phrase for poorly defined “value”, they’re missing a critical opportunity to communicate the value of social media and to set expectations for measuring success. That simply isn’t a mistake most marketers can afford in this economic climate.

Join us for the online book discussion to dig in more deeply into this topic.

Jonathan Knowles addresses the Social Media Metrics challenge.

An ROI story: The metrics were thiiiiiiiis big

Photos: Thanks Bill Johnston!

{ 0 comments }

Over the past few years, I’ve had a lot of opportunity to write about marketing finance and metrics. Like many marketers of my generation, my understanding of marketing performance metrics was transformed by the 2000 recession. At the time I was president of a marketing agency in San Francisco, and as the economy plunged, I watched as clients mercilously slashed marketing teams and budgets. When the economy bottomed out, Marketing ROI became an obligatory mantra recited in every new business meeting. Marketers got swept up in the cult of ROI, accepting an unassailable truth that dictated their behavior, without question or true belief. Few marketers had the training to put ROI in a real financial context–our business schools don’t like to worry creative minds with accounting requirements–so Marketing ROI was interpreted in myriad ways, which often meant little more than a vague definition of “success”.

With a vacuum of financial acumen among marketers and a rising imperative for accountability, CFOs gained ever greater dominion over marketing programs by holding tighter purse strings. Marketing gurus responded with all kinds of new marketing formulas featuring pseudo-financial concepts–Return on [Your Concept Here]–instead of promoting basic financial fundamentals so marketers could connect with the CFO on common ground. This only distanced marketers further from the boardroom, as I wrote a couple of years ago:

Marketing loses all credibility with the board room suite when it twists and bends financial metrics designed to measure value creation into concepts that skirt the issue of accountability for actually creating value.

Even before the new financial crisis hit, I could see the ROI shackles hobbling marketing organization’s and their ability to innovate. It wasn’t the concept of measuring peformance that was the problem, but the inability of marketers to effectively argue a compelling business case that challenged whatever rigid ROI framework they felt imposed on them by the CFO. As social media surged, I sat in many dozens of new business meetings where marketing executives stalled out in their enthusiasm for innovation when it came to justifying any new program without a proven ROI. The irony was stunning: on the one hand, businesses and board rooms were buzzing with the new wisdom of Innovation, and yet they couldn’t execute anything innovative because there was no appetite for risk–and this was when times were good:

I don’t want to be flippant about this, but I think marketers need to bring a little balance to the justifiable demand for performance accountability. We do need to be accountable, and we do need to show that we’ve thoroughly vetted the investments we’re making. But when you’re in a competitive market that demands innovation, you have to get in the trenches to help innovation along, instead of just throwing up knee-jerk stop signs to every project that doesn’t come with a business case tied up in a neat bow. It makes me think of a prehistoric fish in a receding inland sea saying to an amphibian “so, what’s the business case for legs?”

With the new economic crisis deepening, this is going to be a critical test for marketers. A steep recession drives a natural imperative for immediate returns. But we’re not just in a recession. We’re at the apex of a global cycle of creative destruction. GM, CitiGroup, New York Times–representative samples of the titan industries of manufacturing, finance and media–are all on the edge of bankruptcy. The businesses that survive this destruction–and the marketers that support them–have to find new ways to drive returns, and those new methods are not going to come gift wrapped in a mature ROI model. In fact, ROI may be entirely the wrong financial metric. But marketers with no grounding in finance, and with no common ground to share with the CFO, won’t be in a position to make those arguments, or to critically challenge the happy case studies offered by vendors.

Fortunately, there are some ports in this storm. There are a few marketing thought-leaders that can not only bridge the gap between CMOs and CFOs, but they have the talent to make marketing finance accessible to mere mortals. One of my favorite lights in this small pantheon is Jonathan Knowles, a banker by training and a brand consultant by trade. Jonathan has written extensively about marketing finance, including an entertaining book on Marketing ROI. I interviewed Jonathan for BusinessWeek back in 2005 and we’ve maintained a friendship ever since. Jonathan has opened my eyes to a number of financial concepts that illuminate marketing trends, including the critical rise of intangible assets as we’ve shifted away from a manufacturing economy.

I’ll be writing a string of posts in conversation with Jonathan over the next few weeks on marketing finance and social media, focusing on the fundamentals marketers need to understand to escape the Cult of Marketing ROI and develop a strong partnership with their CFO. We’re jointly fielding a survey on Social Media Metrics, and Jonathan will be my guest this Friday at the San Francisco Social Media Breakfast. There are a few seats left for the breakftast, which you can pick up online.

Photo credit: allspice1

{ 7 comments }

I’ve been truly slammed for the past few weeks, with a new SocialRep product release in the works, new customers, and the San Francisco Social Media Breakfast coming up next week. But as they say, if you want something done, give it to someone who’s busy. And this week, I finally found a resolution to a problem that’s been bugging me for months.

If you’ve joined this crazy productivity revolution, where you can run a couple of companies, half a dozen blogs, and a string of online personas, then, like me, you’ve probably reached a point of virtual schizophrenia. I’ve been working for months on finding a strong thread of singularity and simplification in the things I do, without losing the rich variety of channels to connect and create value. I’ve noticed that just the fragmentation of logging in to various separate blogs, social networks and websites has created a very real psychological resistance. I forget which bookmark to follow, which site I’m posting on, which idea was supposed to go where, which means that instead of managing these things on autopilot, I have to actively think about the most mundane tasks continually. Which sucks.

So after searching for more complex ways to simplify–like multi-tenant blog networks, and complex syndication routines–I finally came across a less perfect, but vastly simpler solution. Instead of trying to centralize everything, what if I could create connection “pods” that would segment and automate many of the connection tasks? And I’ve figured out how to do it with Firefox.

Here’s the skinny, and a disclaimer. I’m describing a conceptual routine that I’ve successfully implemented on my computer. I’m not offering a service or technical support. Proceed at your own risk.

The premise of this concept is simple.

1. I want to segment various common web connections and routines: Blogging, Networking, Business, Finance.
2. I want to be able to click on one icon, and have all the related connections opened in browser tabs, ready to go.
3. I want to customize each browser for each segment so that the working environment is visually distinct.
4. I must be able to have multiple segments open simultaneously.
5. Sorry, bookmarks won’t cut it. Not even close.

My solution is based on an aspect of FireFox that Web developers rely on–the ability to run multiple instances of the browser, under different user profiles, at the same time. If you have a home computer you share with your family, you might already have separate profiles for logging in to FireFox so that your bookmarks and history are yours alone. But if you take this concept up a notch, you can turn it into the solution I’m running now. The idea is to create a separate profile for each segment you want to manage (e.g. blogging), but then to use an obscure FF parameter to allow that profile to run simultaneously with other profiles. Each profile saves its own preferences, including bookmarks, themes, and session data, so you can customize a work environment for each group.

The result is a set of distinct icons on my task bar. When I click the “blogging” icon, an independent instance of Firefox with a slick Aero Theme opens, and automatically pulls up the admin pages of all my blogs in separate tabs. I use a password manager that assures that all I have to do is click “login”, and I’m ready to post on any blog in seconds. I’ve also customized the admin screens of each blog so they look like their respective blogs. When I click on Finance, a completely separate instance of Firefox opens, in a conservative theme, with my banking and accounting sites automatically opened in separate tabs. It’s awesome. I feel ten pounds lighter.

Here’s how to do it in Windows XP. Other systems may vary, but the concept is the same.

1. Click on Start, Run, and type in “firefox.exe -ProfileManager”
2. This brings up the Profile Manager. Create the Profiles you want. (Not sure how scalable this is, so be prudent.)
3. Unless you want to be forced to select a profile every time you run FF, check the box “Don’t Ask at Startup”
4. Now go to your desktop, right click on the desktop and choose “New > Shortcut”. This will be your launch icon.
5. Right click on your new shortcut, and choose “Properties”
6. For your “target” you need to enter the path to your “firefox.exe” file, probably in your Program Files, Firefox directory.
7. In the same text field after the path to “firefox.exe”, type “-P Name” (replace “name” with the name of your profile, e.g. Blogging), followed by ” -no-remote”. The “no remote” part allows you to run simultaneous independent instances of Firefox.
8. For clarity, you should “Change Icon…” in order to easily distinguish your launch icons. You can find lots of free icons on the web.
9. Drag the icon to your task bar.
10. Customize each instance of Firefox to suit your segment. I’ve made sure each theme is a different color, so I know immediately where I am.

Once you have your instance of Firefox up and running for different profiles, use the Firefox preferences tab to establish the pages you want to load when you launch Firefox. If you want to simplify things, just open each of the pages you want in a separate tab, and each time  you reopen Firefox, choose to renew your old session, and all of those pages will reload. You can use Firefox password manager to remember logins to simplify it even further.

I’ve also added some Tab add-ons from Firefox to color and organize tabs, but that’s a whole playground unto itself. The bottom line for me is that I now have a set of buttons to launch dedicated working environments in a way that clarifies and automates many of the mind-numbing tasks that I shouldn’t be wasting RAM on. I hope you find the same result.

Here’s my dedicated blogging instance of FF, with the slick Aero Theme, with all my blog admin sites ready to go in separate tabs.

{ 0 comments }