Blog covering all aspects of Internet marketing including search optimization & marketing, email marketing, blog marketing, video marketing, social network marketing, SMS marketing & online pr.
This is the presentation my Tunheim Partners colleague Pat Lilja and I gave to the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits annual technology conference this year:
I've been presenting at the Minnesota Council Of Nonprofits' annual technology and communications conference for the past two years and I will again this year. This year the conference takes place in Minneapolis on Thursday.
It is an all day event and a big production; I've always been impressed with the scope and quality of the conferences. This year, the conference is called Message+Medium+Message and it is largely devoted to social media. There is clearly a demand for information on the topic because the Council had a record number of registrants this year and the event sold out.
The conferences are so good because the Council consistently gets such talented people to participate. Perusing the list of presenters this year, I'm struck by the quality of the people who will speak. Within the social media and Internet technology sphere, here are some of the people who will share their knowledge and expertise:
Aaron Landry will be talking about Web 2.0 basics. Aaron is a prolific blogger. If you pay any attention to the Minnesota blogosphere, you can't help but run across his content. It's clear, too, that he's immersed in social media, from his blog to Twitter to Flickr, he's integrated online communication into his daily life.
Beth Kanter will talk about Nonprofits in the Age of Social Media and she'll conduct a social media game. I've been following Beth's Blog about social media and nonprofits for some time now and I'm continually impressed with her ideas there. She's also a great resource for discovering new and useful social media sites.
The citizen journalism site Twin Cities Daily Planet is represented by long-time Strib veteran Jeremy Iggers and editor Mary Turk. They'll talk about Media Relations in the Age of New Media.
Peter Fleck's wonderfully titled session, Why I Hate Facebook, will address how nonprofits can use social networking sites and, of course, why he hates Facebook. Peter blogs at his PF HYPER Blog. Peter will also talk about perhaps the most important technology of all for social media, RSS, the glue that holds the social net all together.
There are ton more talented people presenting: Check out the sessions and bios pages.
This year I'll be presenting with my Tunheim Partners colleague, Pat Lilja. Our session is called Conversational Marketing: New Media Communication Strategy. Pat and I will discuss how to engage in the conversations taking place on the popular social media sites.
If you're attending the conference, track me down and say hi. If you can't make it, I'll probably Tweet from there, so you can follow my Twitter account, if you like. I'll also be putting resources from our session online and I'll let you know when it's live.
Though this is a 2005 UC Berkley lecture by Dr. Marti Hearst, most of the lecture is entirely relevant and up-to-date today because search technology has not fundamentally changed since then. The lecture is entitled Search Engines: Technology, Society, and Business:
Pioneer Press technology columnist Julio Ojeda-Zapata has been all over the Macworld Expo and it's been fascinating to watch him microblog on Twitter, and in addition to his tech column for the PiPress, to post to his own Your Tech Weblog and upload video of the expo to YouTube. The video gives you a great sense of what it's like to be there:
These are a few videos (courtesy of Blip TV) from the recently concluded Web 2.0 summit that "brings the intelligence, innovation, and leadership of the Internet industry together in one place at one time. The Summit is known for its interactive format, stressing audience interaction and participation.". The videos feature an opening welcome by Tim O'Reilly & John Battelle, High Order Bit with Mary Meeke, and a conversation with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg.
On Tuesday, I asked whether Robots would be the new Internet marketing platform. Now that I'm paying closer attention to robotics, I came across this short video of a presentation that engineer Hod Lipson gave at the TED Conference demonstrating some of his robots that can learn, understand themselves and even self-replicate:
I know, it's not necessarily directly related to Internet marketing but increasingly we'll need think about things that are aware of themselves that are not human. If machines and software become aware of themselves and their environment and are able learn, then the manner in which they interact with humans will have just as much an effect on marketing as it will on anything else. I don't know how but I do know we'll need to understand the communication that occurs in that environment.
I am fascinated with Second Life. For the uninitiated, Second Life is a popular virtual world.
Wikipedia describes a virtual world as "a computer-based simulated environment intended for its users to inhabit and interact via avatars. This habitation usually is represented in the form of two or three-dimensional graphical representations of humanoids (or other graphical or text-based avatars). Some, but not all, virtual worlds allow for multiple users."
Second Life is populated with actual people and organizations. You can buy and develop real estate and property with the development tools that are provided for you. You can conduct actual transactions in Second Life. From the Second Life web site: "commerce is handled with the in-world unit-of-trade, the Linden dollar, which can be converted to US dollars at several thriving online Linden Dollar exchanges." The company that runs Second Life is Linden Lab, thus the Linden Dollar.
While fascinating, I don't link Second Life is yet ready for prime time. You have to download and install software to use it, there is precious little guidance about what to do when you enter the world, let alone find any interesting destinations, and the graphics are clunky. But when they improve on those things and get the game to run in a browser so you don't have to install software, Second Life has fantastic potential.
The marketing opportunities an easy-to-use and widely popular virtual world presents are limitless. Organizations such as Reuters, BBC Radio 1, and Wired magazine, Microsoft and Dell and Sun Microsystems, and Major League Baseball have set up shop there.
Right now, unless you've got tons of cash to spend on development and real world marketing, Second Life seems good for generating earned media, such as Duran Duran's presence there. The 80s band had been all but forgotten until they generated publicity through Second Life.
I recently ran across the video below on YouTube that illustrates the public relations dividends of a Second Life presence.
William Gibson is one of my favorite authors. He's been called a cyberpunk novelist because his stories take place largely on "the grid" and visualize a dystopic future in which the distinction between online and off is practically meaningless. (My favorites of his oeuvre are Neuromancer
A reading by William Gibson from his new book Spook Country
Product placement can work in Second Life but it can't be forced; it's gotta feel natural. In this case, with William Gibson, it makes eminent sense.
William Gibson Reads From Spook Country In Second Life
The Washington Post reports today that Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney may be backing out of the CNN/YouTube GOP Primary debate. The report says Giuliani is unlikely to participate and quotes Romney dismissing the seriousness of the debates: "I think the presidency ought to be held at a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman."
The reason the two Republicans want to skip the debate probably has more to do with the success of YouTube itself than with the dignity of the debate format.
Search for rudolph giuliani at YouTube and the first link you get is to a video of the former New York city mayor in drag:
A search for mitt romney at YouTube returns a bunch of links to videos produced by the Romney campaign but also a link to a video of the 1994 U.S. Senate campaign debate between Romney and Ted Kennedy featuring Romney expressing views that Republican primary voters could find distasteful and even offensive:
Both videos could easily make it to the debates if hooked on legitimate questions. Romney's video is easy: Because he's expressed views contrary to those he now holds, how are we to believe him? Giuliani in drag could be used in the context of a question about gay rights, an issue Giuliani probably would like to avoid addressing before a Republican primary audience.
Indeed, as two of the most popular presidential campaign political videos on YouTube (the Giuliani video has been viewed more than 373,000 times; the Romney video got more than 162,000 views), their absence from the debate would be glaring.
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Watching the CNN/YouTube debate for the Democratic presidential primary candidates on Monday, I thought it was a fairly good format but not quite the populist innovation I was hoping for. The one thing that struck me from an online politics and marketing point of view, was the candidate's YouTube commercials that ran going into, appropriately, commercial breaks.
With the exception of Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, though some were cute or humorous, all the candidates had the pretty standard boilerplate political TV ads we've come to expect. Only Clinton and Edwards embraced the culture of YouTube.
There are certain communication conventions that have percolated to the surface of the YouTube community to become common practices. Take three prominent examples 1) Webcam commentary where the video creator(s) speaks directly to the camera, 2) mashups, where you take various pictures or video clips and mix them with music or commentary to make an entirely new video, and 3) crowd sourcing, where you ask the YouTube community at large to create a video for you.
John Edwards' campaign produced their own video for the debate with a mashup of the title song from the musical Hair and photos that contrasted images of hair with images of Alberto Gonzalez, President Bush, mayhem in Iraq, and the desperation during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:
The video is very sophisticated in the sense that it addresses an Edwards weakness. Edwards has been criticized as a pretty boy and Democratic primary voters may worry that this presents an electability issue for him. A YouTube video of him combing his hair before an interview has enjoyed more than 825,000 views and not long ago he was in the news for paying exorbitant prices to his hair stylist:
Edwards' ad address the issue, makes fun of himself indirectly, while bringing up substantive campaign issues. It also looks like a YouTube video with it's blurry, over-compressed graphics and using the slide show, photo montage format with nonstandard size photos that leave black bars on the screen.
Hilary Clinton's YouTube ad is the result of yet another campaign contest, this time asking her supporters to create a video for the occasion. The last time the campaign tried such an approach was when they asked supporters to pick Clinton's campaign theme song. That didn't go so well when supporters voted for Canadian Celine Dion.
But this time, the campaign got a hit. The winner of the contest mashes up "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from the Peer Gynt suites by Edvard Grieg...
...with the iconic placards from Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues...
... right down to the same font:
By using crowd sourcing (a democratic activity, in this case), the Clinton campaign got a video that looks right at home on YouTube, evokes a cultural icon representative of change in the form of Bob Dylan with imagery that touches two generations (the 80s band INXS did a video using the placard theme as well) and echoes the campaign's catchphrase (Ready For Change), addresses specific campaign issues, and ends with a clever tagline that appeals to women.
I have one real criticism about the debate.
I would've liked to see CNN and YouTube use the wisdom of crowds, the Web 2.0 idea that many heads are better than one, by allowing people to vote on which video questions would be used for the debate rather than leaving it up to the news organizations to choose.
Sure, the campaigns would no doubt game the system by having their supporters vote for the best questions for their candidate. And there's no surefire way to prevent people from voting multiple times, though there are restrictions you can implement. But the sheer critical mass of the volume of CNN viewers and YouTube users would no doubt level that playing field.
And, God forbid, foreigners might vote for the questions! But you know what, who cares? It's not like, in this day and age, the rest of the world's perception of or issues with us don't matter.
My hunch is that the most pertinent and pressing issues would rise to the top and the questions would be formed in a manner most people thought would elicit a valid answer.
Finally, I would have really liked to see the candidates fully embrace Open Source Politics by, rather than directing their message at voters, eliciting opinions from voters. I would've liked to have seen one or more candidates use their commercial to ask the viewers and YouTubers for their feedback, for their issues and concerns, and to post them as a video response to that commercial.
By and large, though, the debate was more than a ratings gimmick, it was a step forward in online politics.
All Candidate Commercials For The Democratic Primary CNN/YouTube Debate
This is the full presentation Ann Treacy and I gave on marketing with Web 2.0 technologies, called Communications 2.0. We presented to a nonprofit communications class at Hamline University.
This lecture is divided into twelve segments that cover the theories and technologies behind Web 2.0; marketing with photo sharing sites such as Flickr; podcasting and podcast marketing through such services and search engines as Odeo; viral video and video sharing sites like YouTube; social bookmarking marketing with services like del.icio.us; feed readers and RSS marketing through services like Bloglines and Technorati; microblogging and mobile marketing through text messaging and instant messaging with services like Twitter; marketing with document sharing services like Google Docs; event marketing with online calandar services like Google Calendar and Upcoming.org; expertise positioning with answer services like Yahoo! Answers and Answers.com; and the lecture is capped off with a question and answer session.
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This is the twelfth, and last, part of a presentation Ann Treacy and I gave on Web 2.0 technologies, called Communications 2.0. We presented to a nonprofit communications class at Hamline University.
The twelfth segment is a question and answer session about marketing using Web 2.0 technologies:
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This is the eleventh part of a presentation Ann Treacy and I gave on Web 2.0 technologies, called Communications 2.0. We presented to a nonprofit communications class at Hamline University.
The eleventh segment discusses establishing your expertise by marketing yourself or your organization by providing answers using services such as Yahoo! Answers:
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This is the tenth part of a presentation Ann Treacy and I gave on Web 2.0 technologies, called Communications 2.0. We presented to a nonprofit communications class at Hamline University.
The tenth segment discusses event marketing using calendar services such as Google Calendar and Upcoming.org:
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This is the ninth part of a presentation Ann Treacy and I gave on Web 2.0 technologies, called Communications 2.0. We presented to a nonprofit communications class at Hamline University.
The ninth segment discusses communicating using such document sharing services as GoogleDocs:
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This is the eighth part of a presentation Ann Treacy and I gave on Web 2.0 technologies, called Communications 2.0. We presented to a nonprofit communications class at Hamline University.
The eighth segment discusses microblogging and text and instant message marketing through microblogging services such as Twitter:
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This is the seventh part of a presentation Ann Treacy and I gave on Web 2.0 technologies, called Communications 2.0. We presented to a nonprofit communications class at Hamline University.
The seventh segment discusses web log marketing through blog search engines such as Technorati:
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This is the sixth part of a presentation Ann Treacy and I gave on Web 2.0 technologies, called Communications 2.0. We presented to a nonprofit communications class at Hamline University.
The sixth segment discusses RSS marketing through feed readers and blog search engines such as Bloglines:
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This is the fifth part of a presentation Ann Treacy and I gave on Web 2.0 technologies, called Communications 2.0. We presented to a nonprofit communications class at Hamline University.
The fifth segment discusses social bookmarks marketing through such services as del.icio.us:
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This is the fourth part of a presentation Ann Treacy and I gave on Web 2.0 technologies, called Communications 2.0. We presented to a nonprofit communications class at Hamline University.
The fourth segment discusses viral video marketing through such services as YouTube:
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This is the third part of a presentation Ann Treacy and I gave on Web 2.0 technologies, called Communications 2.0. We presented to a nonprofit communications class at Hamline University.
The third segment discusses podcasting and podcast marketing through such services as Odeo:
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