A little over two years ago when I was starting my blog I came up with the idea of calling it “microexplosion” it was all based on the idea that all the new media tools are simply spark creators and that if the goal of marketing/PR/advertising is to create ideas that catch fire, then leveraging the new spark creators would be worth looking into. The funny thing about a spark, is that it doesn’t seem like a big deal all by itself. After all, a spark vanishes in an instant. You don’t even feel it if it touches your skin…but given the enough time and the right circumstances a spark can turn into a blazing fire.

Traditional marketers don’t have time for sparks. They want something that goes boom. It needs to be big and it needs to be loud. They want everyone to know when it ignites. Their entire professional worth is based on the bigness and the loudness of the boom. They get paid to make big booms.

Social media marketers don’t need a big boom. They have all these little spark starters. They can go over here and create a spark and then go over there and create a spark and then discover another area and create a spark and in the end they step back and see some of those sparks turn into tiny flames. Those flames can turn into small fires and those fires grow and can go on blazing for a long time.

Think of it like this…explosion fires are quickly put out, but fires that start with sparks aren’t. Explosion fires are quickly discovered and dealt with but spark fires go unnoticed at first but when they are noticed they’re already spreading rapidly. That’s why forest fires are such a big deal. They can take weeks to put out.

If you’re marketing with explosions you have to keep making it bigger and louder just to make sure someone notices your explosion among all the other explosion marketers. If you’re marketing with sparks, you just have to find the right scenario for your spark to ignite.

Last week I had the opportunity to interview Tony Zito, the CEO for mediaFORGE, a company that “has widgets comin’ out their ads.” More to the point, mediaFORGE creates widgets as a new means of display advertising. What that means is they don’t do online advertising the way most people do. Don’t ask them to create a banner ad for you. They won’t do it. They’ll give you a widget instead…and you’ll be glad they did. According to Zito, their widgets perform with a conversion rate that’s three to five times higher than standard banner ads. You can see some of their widgets on their showcase page.

Think about that conversion rate over standard banner ads…three to five times more conversions. So if you’re getting a 3% conversion rate now, you could be getting 9% or even a 15% conversion rate by simply ditching the ads that people don’t like anyway for something they’ll engage and act on. Zito thinks this is the next phase of display ads. I happen to agree. We know banner ads don’t work. Even stats from four years ago show they haven’t been working for a while.

Widgets seemed to really take off last year as more marketers looked to them for sales and promotions. According to Zito, “last year was the year of the widget, but this year is the year of ‘how do we monetize the widget?’” For all the interest marketers are showing for new media marketing opportunities, the inevitable question is: “Ok, now what? When does this start making money for us?” That’s a question that all social media marketers are dealing with and one that mediaFORGE seems to be providing an answer for.

What I’ve personally be perplexed by for a while now is that if not banner ads, what do you recommend for mere display ad purposes? I think Zito and mediaFORGE are going down the right road. The widgets provide something that has value to the customer or prospect. It allows a person to engage an ad rather than simply being interrupted. I don’t know for sure if widgets are the next wave of display ads, but it sure seems like it’s going the right direction.

When I was on vacation last week I read a fascinating story about the rivalry between the two top gadget blogs in the world: Engadget and Gizmodo. It turns out these two blogs are the Hatfields and McCoys of the blogosphere and they’re taking aim at each other every day in the form of scooping each other with the best gadget and gear news available.

This blog on blog conflict is great for the readers because they reap the benefits of the rivalry. The dark side of the feud is that it turns personal from time to time. Apparently each blog has accused the other with various accusations and that got me thinking about the rest of us who blog. After all, I personally advocate content that will “outrage” as one of the five categories of good social media content so what if we developed a rival who seemed to have us squarely in his crosshairs on a regular basis? How would you deal with that given you have a public platform with which to fire back? Or maybe you’re the aggressor and you’re gunning for someone else for some reason. How do you decide what’s in play and what’s out of bounds? As I’ve thought about these things I’ve come to this one statement to sum up how I will act in either case: Accuse slowly and apologize quickly.

The BeautiControl Lesson

The thing about having a publishing house at your fingertips is that you can say (or do) just about anything and send it out to the world only to think better of it only a few hours later. That’s part of the power of a blog or online video. You get things published quickly, but once something has been online go ahead and assume it’s indexed and cached somewhere (probably by Google) to be found later…which means whatever you publish likely won’t disappear forever even if you want it to. I remember a story from a year ago when the company BeautiControl was promoting an online video called “Cars, Money, Friendship, Bling, and Travel” as a sales and motivational tool for potential BeautiControl consultants. The company started catching some heat from their consultants for the video so they pulled it down, but someone else had already captured it and republished it on YouTube. That video has over 10,000 views as of this post. That’s 10,000 more views than Beauticontrol wanted, but there it still is, a year later, still getting views.

The lesson here is that just because you can publish something quickly doesn’t mean you always should. If you’re going to accuse someone of something you should really make sure you know what you’re getting into. Do you have all the facts? Do you know another side of the story? If not, why not take a little extra time.

Dear AT&T: I’m Sorry

If you do screw up or there’s even a hint of misunderstanding on your blog, be willing to apologize very quickly. You’ll be forgiven. You may lose a little credibility, but in the end people will remember you apologized as soon as you realized it was a mistake. Don’t delete the mistake either. Unless you’ve published something that’s gotten you into legal hot water leave the accusation up with a link or note to the correction. In the spirit of full disclosure and transparency you need to leave it there for all to see…even if you were a jerk or an idiot.

I had to do this last summer. I accused AT&T of missing the launch of the iPhone on their website the day it launched. I thought I had a big story there…until about an hour later I got a phone call from a friend who told me I was 24 hours early on the iPhone launch. AT&T wasn’t late. I was early. I quickly updated the post (leaving the original, incorrect post) and admitted I was an idiot. I think AT&T got over it.

The Bottom Line: The ability to publish quickly is good and bad. You determine which it will be every time you post. Accuse slowly and apologize quickly to stay out of a little less trouble.

Last week I conducted a social networking experiment. I had been asked to recommend someone in LinkedIn and as I was doing it I got to thinking about how I’ve never been big on writing recommendations for LinkedIn. In fact, I’ve struggled with LinkedIn’s true usefulness for most professional unless they’re in the market for a new job (and therefore need the networking components LinkedIn provides.)  It’s great to make connections but I don’t get the sense of community and activity there like I do in Facebook or something more local for me like Digital Nashville. It’s not that I’m against LinkedIn, it’s just that it felt like something I should do but didn’t really see a direct benefit.

The Experiment

A funny thing happened while I was writing the requested recommendation. I started thinking about how bloggers strategically spread “link love” by linking to fellow bloggers to promote both blogs, so could two people benefit from some LinkedIn love in the form of recommendations? I think so…and my little experiment has proven so.

I spent about a half hour recommending people I know from various work experiences. Some are former coworkers. Some are current clients. Some are vendors I work with. I wrote short, genuine, personal recommendations for several people. And then I waited.

What happened in the 48 hours that followed was wonderful. I heard back from almost every single person. Some simply thanked me for the kind words. Others said they would return the favor and write a recommendation for me on LinkedIn. In one case, I found out the recommendation even made it to the “What Others Are Saying About Me” page on one guy’s business blog.

The bottom line was it bolstered my own LinkedIn recommendations a bit (with some others still coming I understand) and it earned me some relational equity from the rest of the people. It was a win for them (they received an unsolicited recommendation) and it was a win for me because I was able to do something nice for them and get a little LinkedIn recommendation love myself.

My Hesitation For This Post

One final thing…I should note that I was hesitant to post about this experiment because the last thing I want to do is misrepresent my motives in this experiment as self serving or that I only wrote recommendations for the favor that might be returned to me. That wasn’t the case because I actually didn’t know what kind of reaction I would receive. I suspected that some people would be happy with the recommendation, but I was equally braced for the fact that some people could be highly suspicious of an unwarranted recommendation so I only wrote recommendations for people I know personally and I didn’t ask anyone to recommend me back.

The way I see it is that the gift of unsolicited recommendations is the cake. If recommendations or relational favor are a result, that’s icing. The experiment was really just that: if I serve cake, does icing exist? I found that the answer is YES…as long my cake is authentic. Maybe you can serve some authentic cake today too.

I remember being totally enamored by the story of Mozart the first time I saw Amadeus. One of the things Mozart did was change the way the Austrians viewed operas. They thought they knew what an opera was and then they experienced Mozart’s operas. He built on the foundation of operas as they had been done but improved on it dramatically.

In many ways that’s how I see the new marketing opportunities with social media and social networking tools. They build on the foundation of old marketing for something better. The video below from Amadeus drives home the difference between the old and new. Be sure to listen for the quote, “It doesn’t really work, does it?” Seems like it fits the old marketing vs. new marketing analogy pretty well. Here’s the clip for the feed readers.

According to Apple CEO, today was the “biggest launch of his career.” That’s quite a statement from the guy who launched the iMac, iPod, and original iPhone. Suffice it to say…today was important for Apple, if for no other reason than because Steve said so.

Now it’s pretty well known that Apple isn’t too interested in employees blogging or even an official corporate blog. There’s an unofficial Apple blog and even a Fake Steve Jobs blog (which appears to be going away now incidentally) but nothing official from the people who inside the apple. For the last several years Apple really hasn’t had to worry about their own blog. After all, they had/have millions of raving fans to say everything for them. Then today came. The biggest launch day in Jobs’ career and it hasn’t gone well for customers.

What Happened Today:

In a nutshell two things happened today from what I’ve read (and heard). One the one hand the hardest of hardcore iPhone enthusiasts stood in line for days and hours to get the new iPhone. According to reports, many people walked away disappointed today due to a lack of supply. The bigger issue today, however, was that for the (presumably) hundreds of thousands who did purchase today, the activation servers at Apple were down for hours. This rendered the new iPhones inoperable and the old iPhones for those making the switch inoperable as well. I saw many an Apple fan not happy with Apple today by just watching Twitter.

So, back to the blog…if Apple had a blog today they would have been able to tell customers what was going on and when they could expect it to be fixed. If Apple had a blog they would have been talking directly to their biggest supporters (because who else waits that long for something you can walk in the store for in a few days?) If Apple had a blog it wouldn’t have fixed the problems but it would have changed the conversation.

The good news for Apple is that it has a ton of relational equity to spend. Today it spent some by all accounts. Apple will probably be fine. They’ll even be fine without a blog, but they’re one of a very few number of companies where people would basically say, “it was a terrible experience but it was ‘worth the hell.’” Apple has this equity and brand loyalty. You don’t. You (and I) never will. If you don’t have a blog then how will you communicate during your own iPocalypse?

If you know me or have been reading this blog long you know I’m a firm believer in the idea of compelling content being the best way to use social media tools. That’s what the whole “Old McDonald” approach to good content is all about. If, however, it’s still not coming together for you, think about this: content MUST have value to the people you’re trying to reach. If it doesn’t, it’s not good content. It’s probably boring information that lacks something interesting or it’s marketing copy that’s just you talking about you.

So…let’s go back to the old McDonald idea. If good content that has value to someone contains at least one of the EIEIO elements (Entertain, Inspire, Educate, Inform, or Outrage) then you are creating content with value. If you’re still stuck though, add “me” to the end of the words. It would look like this:

• Entertain Me.
• Inspire Me.
• Educate Me.
• Inform Me.
• Outrage Me.

See what’s missing here? You. It’s not about you. It’s about me…the person you’re trying to reach. Now go write a blog post for the “me” you want to read your blog.

Yesterday I saw a term I haven’t come across in a while: Mass Media. Remember that term? Yeah, we don’t hear it much these days. The context for the term came from a professor friend who teaches at a college here in Nashville. She mentioned a class for freshmen this fall called “mass media and society” but I got hung up at the mass media part of the class title.

I asked the professor why that term is still being used and it sounds like it has something to do with the book selection or something like that. Maybe it’s a historical perspective of media and our society. I’m not actually clear on what it’s going to be but the term got me thinking…isn’t mass media dead?

Mass media was all about the big TV networks, major newspaper outlets, and terrestrial radio, but how massive does something have to be to be considered mass media these days? With the numbers declining in all three of those areas can we even still call them mass media? Is the term even relevant today? Mass media died as it related to television years ago around the time cable TV really took off.

One might say mass media is about the number of people you reach, meaning you reach “the masses” (which I assume we translate into millions of people) through the mediums. Yet, that doesn’t really work because there are blogs, podcasts, and even YouTube videos that reach millions of people and we wouldn’t classify them as mass media. They’re the opposite of mass media: user generated, freely accessed, open to everyone, micro media.

Mass media is just a term that used to mean something that we don’t even think about anymore. It’s like the 8-track tape. It had a good run for a while but simply has no use to us today. Perhaps mass media didn’t actually die but simply disappeared in the shadow of so many other things that we use today.

The bottom line is that we kind of know that mass media doesn’t really stick like it used to. It doesn’t have the teeth it did even ten years ago. The real question as a marketer then, is do you still act/plan/execute like the mass media is still massive? There’s a new “MASS” you should be thinking about if you’re not already.

Incidentally, the mass media and society class at the college will have a blog. How’s that for irony?

I have almost finished reading an excellent book on social media and the way it’s changing business and marketing. The book is called Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. This book has a really solid perspective and methodology for identifying the type of people you want to reach as a social media marketer and then building your strategy based on that information.

I regularly tell people that it’s not enough to know what the social media tools are or even how to use them. You must also know the context with which to use them. That’s why I’m so adamant that content must be your marketing strategy if you’re going to use these tools. Content is a big piece of the context you need to grasp.

What Groundswell helped me refine in my thinking is that we cannot look at everyone we want to reach with a social media campaign the same way, meaning some people are more likely to participate in a social network than others or comment on a blog, or listen to a podcast. Likewise, some people can be tapped to join you in making content whereas others will simply be spectators.

Handy Profile Tool

On the Groundswell website you can play with the very handy “profile tool” which essentially let’s you get a sense of age, nationality, and gender demographics and their relative relationships to social media technology. For instance you will find that:

• 39% of American men and women ages 18-24 are at the top of the social technographics ladder in the Creators category (that means they publish on blogs or websites and upload audio and video files they created.)
• The percentage is lower in the Creator category as the people get older.
• In the 25-34 age group the number of Creators drops a bit to 30%.
• The percentage drops sharply to 17% for ages 35-44.
• It continues to decline to 11% for ages 45-54.
• The percentage of Creators finally bottoms out at 5% for ages 55 and older.

This is the kind of good information you can have to make informed decisions for social media marketing. If I wanted to create a contest where people upload their videos to win a big prize then I might see some pretty good success among the younger two groups (18-35 year olds) but much beyond that the number of people who would create a video is slim. Depending on the company and who you want to reach, this can make all the difference. With more information comes better decisions and many times better decisions lead to more success. Check out the entire Groundswell book for a lot more on this. It’s certainly worth the read.

I missed posting about my two year blogging anniversary a few weeks ago so this is my post to make up for it. In my very first post for this blog two years ago on the topic of social media I wrote:

Everything available to you through web 2.0 takes time to get off the ground. Some people will be fine with that, but for those of you with mandates and timelines you’re going to come to a fork in the road of whether you want to do something that people can see soon (old marketing methods) with something that will have an enduring impact (web 2.0 methods). Consider it your own little blue pill vs red pill. One will take you to a world you couldn’t imagine and the other…will keep you right where you are.

So, do I still believe this two years later? I sure do. In fact, I think this blue pill/red pill decision is one that more marketers are deciding on today than they were two years ago when I first wrote this. I had lunch today with some people from a company who are deciding right now which way to go. I had a similar lunch meeting yesterday. The tide seems to be coming in on social media.

Some people thought social media was a fad (and have since admitted so to me) but now see the communication/Internet/marketing world has changed and they need to change with it. Other people just weren’t paying attention or maybe were paying attention but didn’t take the time to get their hands dirty in the social media sandbox. Whatever the case, there’s is a rapidly widening awareness of the choice that needs to be made.

So which will you choose? If you choose the blue pill (blissful ignorance) then congratulations, you don’t have to do much. You can relax knowing you won’t have to go through the possible discomfort of change and new learning. I also hope you’re planning to retire in the next 12-18 months, otherwise you may regret the choice. If you choose the red pill (hard truth) then congratulations, you’re about to enter an exciting and unsettling journey. If you feel like the rules have changed you’re wrong. It’s the game that has changed and it has its own rules…but now you’re choosing to play, and that’s the best place to start.