Shel’s been getting a lot of press lately, some warranted some not, but for sure, a lot of attention. I’m less interested in the drama, but more focused on the impacts of these tools to marketing (that’s my day job) and have some questions for him about the purpose of his Global Neighborhoods mission, quite a few of the folks he interviews are companies I also cover, are my clients, or could be.

Jeremiah: As a new video blogger, you’ve had a rough start, the interview you did with me received some criticism, and equal praise for those who focused on the content. What is the biggest learning from this mixup?

Probably to leave my owl out of the picture.

More seriously, there were three connected lessons:

(1) Don’t even try to become a great video expert. There are plenty of experts, who have training, knowledge and passion for the AV portion of this. When a sponsor comes in, that problem will be promptly solved. That being said, I’ll continue to improve. It’s two months since you became my first interview. I’m a lot better now, although I’m no pro in this area.

(2) Focus on what I do best. I have a pretty good track record as an interviewer. One of my favorite comments–I’m not sure who placed it or where–was a guy who said that when he stopped looking at the video, and just listened, he thought it was quite good. I think this problem also goes away once we get sponsorship. In fact, you were my first interview and I appeared unfocused because I was worried about the camera frame when I should have just listened to you. I also should have cut you off a couple of times. You did go on pretty long now and then.

(3) Make clear who the show is intended for. I think there’s a perception that this show is for people already immersed in social media. Robert and I had a similar problem with bloggers when we wrote Naked Conversations. They thought the book was supposed to be for them, rather than just ABOUT them. Naked Conversations was intended to evangelize blogging to those who didn’t yet know about it. GNTV is intended for professionals who are still struggling over how to use social media in their organizations. They may have never visited Twitter; know nothing about Seesmic or Qik. There are a great number of these people all over the world and this show is intended for them.

Why Global Neighborhoods TV? (GNTV)? Why this show? What’s the story you’re trying to tell?

This show has been my dream for a long time, long before Robert got the chance to start a global tv network for business innovators at FC. I’m primarily a writer and for a very long time have been aware that the best I could ever do is to tell you ABOUT what a person or an event was like. A video camera lets you actually SHOW viewers what you see.

I became aware of the potential when I was writing a book with Robert. For his day job, he was walking around Microsoft with a camera on his shoulder, just talking to people. The result was that he played a role in perceptions of Microsoft improving, of the “Borg” becoming human. I could have written a million words, but they it would not have changed opinions as effectively as a few minutes of handheld video by Robert.

GNTV grew out of a project I’ve been doing since last June on my text blog, with the lengthy title of the SAP Global Survey on Social Media Culture and Business. [http://globalneighbourhoods.net . [Go to the “SAP Reports” category to see them]. So far, I’ve interviewed 71 people in 32 countries, on six continents. They have ranged from Michael Dell, Founder CEO of Dell Computer, to Wael Abbas who posts videos about Egyptian police brutality and posts them on YouTube despite the fact Egypt has incarcerated a fellow blogger to Ethan Bodnar, a Connecticut High School student who said he’s never work for an employer who did not trust him enough to talk about his job on a blog.

The concept was to take this and move it into video, where people could see these diverse believers in social media for themselves. That vision holds firm. In the initial phase, I’m focusing more on business people and service providers who have broken ground for social media in business. It will also be more US based until we get going. My next clip will be an interview with Bob Lutz, vice chairman of GM. Then, I’ll probably post my interview with Biz Stone and the Twitter guys. After that, we’ll probably post a clip I just did on Disney Interactive, mostly on Club Penguin and how it’s bringing the next generation into social networking at such an early age.

Again, GNTV is a program FOR people still struggling with social media, primarily in business, but also in their lives and cultures. It is ABOUT pioneers and smart movers.

Jeremiah: What is the biggest finding from the many interviews you’ve done on the SAP Global Survey, what’s the one trend you’re finding?

That’s easy. in every country, youth is driving social media adoption. That means that when the Club Penguin generation comes into the marketplace, most traditional marketing simply won’t work. So companies really need to start understand what SM tools work for them.

Jeremiah: What can we expect from you and GNTV going forward?

better cameraman.

Jeremiah: Thanks Shel, I look forward to hearing what nuggets come out of these interviews with folks embracing social media in companies and cultures around the world.

8 comments

Click To Play

Which department should take leadership of your corporate web strategy? Earlier this week, I flew out to Vegas to speak on a panel with Alastair Duncan is Chief Executive of MRM, at Intel’s sales and marketing event.

I was really impressed by his nuggets, that I got him on video in the Sands conference center to talk about ownership and governance of web programs within corporations. Alastair’s blog is located Participation Marketing.

What you’ll learn?

Who really is in charge of web strategy programs? Which department (listen to his insightful answer)

How to avoid making your website an irrelevant ‘picture on the wall’

How can Marketing and IT actually get along?

5 comments

Click To Play

I was just at Intel’s Sales and Marketing event on Tuesday, and was really glad to meet Intel’s EMEA Web Strategist (which is what I call decision makers), Taj Peyton. He’s responsible for understanding each of the unique needs of cultures in his European market and developing localized versions of the corporate Intel site –no easy undertaking.

Watch this video and you’ll learn

-Why you should or should not localize
-What you research
-Other than language, how are regionalized sites are different than corporate website
-How to get started
-Management is a nightmare, what tools to use?

I ran out of memory, so the interview got cut short a few seconds, but there’s a lot of meat in his presentation. If you’re planning on localizing you website, be sure to really understand the demographics (who are they), physhographics (how they think/feel), and technographics (how they use technology) before deploying, otherwise you may have just wasted your resources.

And yes, that’s the Wynn in the background, one of Vegas’s newest hotels. Intel put me up at the brand new Venetian extention, the Palazzo, each room is a suite (3 HD flatscreens), it’s opulent. I’m pretty sure I was the first person to every stay in the room as they just opened up last week, why do I think that? I had to plug in a lot of the appliances, I’m sure that’ll never happen again

2 comments

Click To Play

Tristan Nitot, (his blog on open source in French) CEO of Mozilla Europe talks about how Firefox spread mainly through word of mouth and people just sharing it and advocating it to others. He suggests that the open source initiative first resonated with people, thus spurring word of mouth. They encouraged users to have the software loaded on a portable thumbnail flash drive, and install it wherever they went. Blogs were a big component of how it spread, as well as local communities that would be passionate about their region, self-supporting each other, and spreading the word.

Un traditional web strategies
As you may know, Mozilla hasn’t done a lot of traditional marketing or advertising (except for at least one full page add in NYTs with the launch of Firefox 1.0) and is really relying on social media to spread the tools. Exactly how fanatic is it’s customer base? So fanatic that some users created an actual crop circle and it’s featured all over google images searches, as well as in Google Earth! Or they’ve leaned on the community to create and submit videos (30 second commercials) with Firefoxflicks, some of which actually went on major TV networks, sans production costs.

If you’re looking for stats, you’ll find that Firefox is the second most used browser in the world, and it’s primarily spread through grass roots adoption, against a Microsoft product that comes embedded on many platforms. Users have to go out of their way to download the software, let alone spread it to others.

This is fascinating, if I substitute the word ‘Firefox’ and insert the name of ‘any religion’, it still makes sense. For many, it’s almost as if Firefox is gospel.

6 comments

Click To Play

Connie Benson is a community advocate, and is the community manager at ACDsee photo management software that I’ve used when I was a UI designer. Aside from that, she helps me co-moderate the Community Manager group in Facebook, and has been a big contributor in my research, defining the four tenets of community managers, and is becoming a great friend.

I asked Connie what to do when detractors criticize your company, brand, or products, we also talk about dealing with an overwhelming negative community or forum.

I also recommend setting up a process in advanced that helps to identify what type of detractor you’re dealing with, as some should be responded to quickly, and some should never be responded to (ongoing trolls). Develop a plan on what to do, as you’re going to have to deal with different personalities throughout your community program.

Update: Nicholas Butler says in twitter that Connie’s direct actions helped him give the ACDsee products another try, talk about understanding the value of having a community advocate like Connie.

6 comments

Click To Play

As I travel around, I do quick interviews with interesting folks, some of them are speakers, thought leaders, or people I interview for my reports. Marcia immediately impressed me as she was asking very key questions during my keynote, and we furthered the conversation over lunch.

Marcia Kadanoff, who I met at the Web Community Forum up in Seattle, gives her insight on the future of the web. Search will be the common interface, yet the future is distributed, and people will be communicating in many different locations. She suggests that we stop focus on interruption marketing, focus on engagement marketing, and look at widgets.

So what do you think? Is her predictions for 2008 right? I’m in complete agreement, the distributed web is a concept I’ve been discussing for some time.

9 comments

Click To Play

One of Silicon Valley’s most elite Marketer, Evangelist, Blogger, and VC is Guy Kawasaki.

Many know him for his evangelism at Apple, speaking, companies he’s funded, the 8 books he’s been involved with, or the sharing he does from his blog (although he told me over lunch that he’s shared almost everything he can). I met Guy at the local ice rink, where he spends lunches playing hockey. He asked me where I wanted to shoot the video, and I said down by the ice, I had on a jacket, and turtleneck, but he braved the interview for me in just a t-shirt.

Guy shares with me some of his predictions for Marketers in 2008, companies he’s interested in investing with, answers “is entrepreneurship born or bred” (a question from David Wescott in Twitter), about Twitter and it’s impacts to Truemors (from Yama-sami). Oh and here’s the site Guy was raving about, PopURLs. Most recently he’s launched his passion Truemors, which as many of you are seeing in Twitter.

Thanks Guy for taking the time out.

8 comments

Click To Play

Sean O’Driscoll, the General Manager of Microsoft’s MVP program shares with me the three different layers and levels of community. Sean has served the program for 15 years, and had just announced he’s planning to leave Microsoft to try some exciting things (we’ll be hearing from him soon). Thanks Sean for sharing with us and with your community.

Find out: 1) What the three stages of communities are: Satisfaction, Loyalty, Affinity 2) How to find key advocates 3) How to thank/reward them 4) How to engage with them.

Folks have been asking what my life is like and how we do research, I interviewed Sean for over half an hour, and was taking furious notes. It was a great warmup for this video, so in many ways you’re coming with me to the research interviews.

Sean, good luck on your new ventures!

5 comments

Click To Play

In my research I get to interview experts in my industry such as the seasoned Bill Johnston, who’s a community expert and is very involved with community based conferences. In the video above, find out from Bill why he thinks that Marketing should, and should not own the community strategy. Bill also shares how to ‘kick-start’ a community, fortunately, it aligns with objectives first.

The timing of this video is great, as it ties in with what I read from one of the authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto:

Secondly, respected internet ‘uncle’ Doc Searls wrote a great post The only real social networks are personal ones in response to my questions of “Should a brand join or build their own social network”. This is a very relevant question to the time, one that I’m getting asked by our clients frequently. Of course I have an answer, but it depends on what they are trying to achieve. Quite frankly, while I understand Doc’s point, (people over brand) getting marketing organizations to relax is difficult and scary, baby steps are needed.

Doc makes the following points:

First, I’m not sure a “brand” can get social at all.

Second, the notion of “brands” either “building” or “joining” social networks strikes me as inherently promotional in either case, and therefore compromised as a “social” effort.

Third, I’m not sure social networks are “built” in any case. Seems to me they’re more organic than structural.

Fourth, the thing companies need to do most is stop being all “strategic” about how their people communicate.

Chime in: The important questions
It’s important that we explore this issue on both sides, so if you’re a marketeer (or a vendor) please read Doc’s post and weigh in on the issue:

So who really ‘owns’ the community?

Who should be leading the charge within a company to do this?

Is Doc right? Brands can never be part of communities, only people can?

Update: Shel chimes in and thinks I’m getting too close to clients am I sell out? Be sure to read my comment on his post.

16 comments

Click To Play

Open Source products are often high on innovation but low on user experience and are often not presented well to the market. They come across as geeky, not user friendly, and sometimes, just ugly.

As these passionate engineers build these fantastic new products, they can be beat out by a large established company with sophisticated marketing and designers (although potentially inferior products). Take for example that I’ve been pretty vocal with the fact I believe Open ID needs a marketing strategy (note they’ve improved with some videos and adoption is picking up)

I know that pisses off a lot of engineers (many who look down their noses on marketing) but apparently companies like Sony had better MP3 players yet Apple’s superior marketing won the cause. How many of your friends have iPods? How many have Sony’s MP3 player?

So how could this be fixed? I was in Barcelona with some of the top bloggers in the area at our blogger dinner over Tapas and beers and we got onto the discussion on how there are some great open source products out there they really need business and marketing strategy in order to be successful.

How could this work? Open Marketing could be a virtual team of marketing professionals that could be centralized, and help create specialized marketing campaigns for products, and of course sharing in on whatever revenues or recognition that are generated.

Listen in, as Sergio Gaga, Tomy Pelluz, Christian Van der Henst, and Alex Maneu share their opinions.

If you know of any groups that are already doing this, or you would want to get involved and participate, please leave a comment.

11 comments

Click To Play

It’s nearly 2008 and many companies are starting to plan for next year’s web strategy budget. This can include many, many different types of activities, including resources, staffing, and outsourcing services.

Find out how to deploy your resources, and how social media is a ’soft cost’, which I referenced this in my webinar with Seth…but forgot to credit Ian, so here I am now, thanks Ian for being a thought leader

I talked with Ian Lurie, CEO of Portent Interactive, who shares with me how companies should start to think about how the budget their resources. Ian’s written a book called Conversation Marketing, which I’ve read and reviewed. If you look carefully, you’ll see Brian Keith hanging out in the lobby.

Have you seen my list of the Many Forms of Web Marketing for 2007? I’m going to update it soon, what should be added?

7 comments

Click To Play

Before you click play: Do you know what Widgets, Applications, and Canvas Pages are? Can you articulate the differences? Leave a comment below and tell me if you passed this self-quiz.

Thinking of deploying a widget in Facebook or other online community? Rodney Rumford shares with us the difference between Widgets, applications, and canvas pages. I was glad to meet Rodney yesterday at Seattle’s Web Community forum.

I also asked Rodney, what should marketers do before deploying widgets, he shares his strategic viewpoint that aligns very well with the POST methodology.

Find out how widgets can be used for interactive social games –engaging communities.

Tags: wcf07

No comments

Click To Play

Lars Schwenk, General Manager of Cyworld Europe shared with me what it takes to be a community, we were at Forrester’s Consumer forum in Barcelona.

If you’re not familiar with Cyworld that have heavy penetration in South Korea, (50% of Koreans is a member — and that 95 percent of its target youth market is active -Marketwatch) where it was birthed. Find out his four components of community: Communication, Collaboration, Self-Expression and what he calls “Peeping”. Something I swear I’ve never done.

I asked my Twitter network (over 1700 of them) what questions to ask Lars, and David Berkowitz wanted to know what we could learn from Asia’s deployment of Cyworld and what it means to the United States. If you’re interested in social networks in Asia, I was recently in Singapore and asked their top bloggers (video), two months ago I was in HK and talked to many of the web leaders, check out this four part series.

Cyworld launched in North America yet adoption has been very low, I learned from my travels that social technographics vary by culture, so to simply re skin a website for regions doesn’t work. Web Strategists must understand the people who they want to serve first, one size does not fit all!

2 comments

Katie Paine shares how internal teams use measurement of social media, she’s been doing PR measurement for years, and has evolved to measure social media. She’s often told me “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. Of course, trying to manage social media has been hotly debated in my last post.

She invited me to present at her metrics conference a few months ago, but new hire training took priority. She’s one of the top thinkings and practitioners in the space, so give her your full attention in this video. Learn more about her company KDPaine and Partners, thanks KD for your time.

---

You may remember the video blog, Web Strategy Show I used to run at PodTech (my previous employer), the show is designed for those who make decisions for websites, (I call it a Video White Paper) and I interviewed many of the top thought and practice leaders in our industry. These videos tend to be longer in duration, I use a tripod, and we discuss the topics in advance. This is different than my quick “street” video shots I do with my digital camera.

Having left PodTech, (a great place for content creators, as I get to take my show with me) I didn’t get a chance to publish all my tapes (there’s just a few interviews left), and put out a blog post to see if anyone wanted to publish them on my behalf. Cece, from On24.com, a webcasting and media company for some well known brands, immediately contacted me and followed-up. They have a quite a few other videos focused on IT and Marketing topics, on Insight24. They’ve even created a specific channel for the Web Strategy show.

Thanks to Cece and the very professional On24 team!

2 comments

Many video bloggers have emerged, but very few have been able to turn it into a profession, how’d he do it? tune into this video, and found out what motivated him.

Steve Garfield is a videoblogging hero. He’s one of the few in the medium that is able to monetize, hold an audience and continue to build great content. For the industry (I was in it) it was difficult, although there are advertising and sponsorship dollars, they’ve not shifted over from the TV audience (although it’s clear eyeballs are moving to the web).

One of the things Steve prescribes is to keep videos short, you’ll notice I have two types of videos, long form “web strategy show” videos that are 10-15 min, and “street style quick interviews” that are 2 minutes. I try to list my time codes, esp when they are short, I want to respect your time.

I really enjoy Steve’s online charisma and energy, for some reason, he presentation and delivery reminds me of the great Jerry Seinfield. That’s saying a lot, as I’ve met a lot of our famous video bloggers after working at PodTech.

I’ve been slowly posting the Boston videos to my blog, (I space things out over time) and Steve was the best, and therefore the last, yesterday he actually beat me to the punch, and posted on his blog. Be sure to see his vlog post on mediasnacking.

Steve, thanks for taking the time, we really enjoy all that you share.

10 comments

Click To Play

One of my favorite people I’ve had the chance to meet online, do some joint projects, and finally meet in person is the wonderful Ann Handley of Marketing Profs. What is Marketing Profs? I describe it as a user group, trade pub, educational resource, and of course a community. They have a blog, twitter account, and Facebook account, so go sync with them. Ann and her team does a great job providing never ending great content for Marketers, all packaged nicely and tightly for their audience. I was so pleased to meet her in Boston at the blogger dinner, and we immediately hit it off as we did online.

Ann has been leading up the social media aspect of the company, listen in to find out what tools she’s been using, sorry for the shaky cam, I’m usually better, it was a long night, I recorded quite a few interviews that night.

2 comments

Click To Play

A few weeks ago, I met some SF folks at Lunch 2.0 in SF (see pics of this rooftop party.

Randy Fong is a Flex champion and evangelist and gives us his reasons why he prefers to develop there. He tells us about the differences between Flex, Ajax, and Silverlight, and answers which one he thinks will have a faster development time.

I probed him about measurement, which has been a point of contention for many web strategists, he gives his response.

There’s a lot of web strategists reading this blog, tell me about which technology you’re using for rich user experiences and why.

4 comments

Click To Play

Watch the above video to find out why Laura loves and hates twitter.

I was really pleased to finally meet Pistachio (her real name Laura Athavale Fitton) at the Boston Blogger Dinner a few weeks ago. She writes the Great Presentation Blog, and we immediately got into a discussion about Twitter. Aside from being one of the hyper networked and well connected, she’s a natural speaker, and helps others to be great speakers.

When people connect online and interact it’s a pretty amazing network. When two people finally meetup in real life after collaborating online it’s a really an amazing thing, it’s as if people knew each other already and conversations instantly pick up.

I’m on Twitter, (follow me and I’ll add you back) and use it very, very actively, I’ll tweet what I’m reading (and give commentary) even as I do research, so in many ways by following me, it’s getting a glimpse into one of the ‘pipes’ of input and output in my life. If you’re not sure what Twitter is, or how to use it, read what the web strategist should know about Twitter.

10 comments

Click To Play

Editor in Chief (I flubbed the intro) of PC World Harry McCracken (personal blog) loves Flock, so much so that he gave me 2 minute of his time to tell me why. If you want to read his full review, it’s on PCWorld. Previously, I was unconvinced there was room for three browsers in my life, but downloaded it and gave it a whirl. The jury is still out, it takes me time to see if it will really integrate into my lifestyle. I received some feedback about it on Twitter, such as Dennis Howlett tweets “you realize Flock’s OPML import is utterly borked, rendering it almost useless?” amid a mixture of other responses.

One of the best part of the experience is the truly human experience, it’s so common that large and small companies are so visibly unhuman in their website experience. If you’ve any questions about flock, or need quick answers Evan Hamilton the community ambassador (who stepped in after Will Pate moved on) is available. Next time I see him, I’ll get him on video to find out how he’s enjoying being a community manager.

I met up with Harry at Eastwick Communication’s halloween party in Santa Clara, had a great time, met a lot of folks, pics are in flickr of the party.

Have you tried the latest version of flock? It has social features that hook into Facebook, Flickr, Blogging platforms, and Twitter.

2 comments

Although filmed a while ago, Jason Baptiste and I get together at Miami’s WeMedia conference, and discuss the future of the social press release. There are several PR firms that are adopting and implementing them, although there’s been some criticism about it. (Brian has a lengthy counter)

Upon further inspection, Brian Solis has a guide on the SMPR, but sadly, I don’t see a very clear one sentence definition.

I realy enjoy speaking with Jason from Publictivity, he’s clear, articulate and knowledgeable on his topic area, thanks for the patience on posting this video! I’m meeting with some potential folks who may publish my archived videos, stay tuned.

4 comments