Posted by Sheila Scarborough on July 3, 2008 at 9:40 pm
We get this question a lot at Every Dot Connects — “What the heck is Twitter, and how can something that sounds so goofy possibly do anything useful?”
Today, many people in Austin, Texas saw firsthand what Twitter can do with a few dedicated people and a great idea.
It was the inaugural Austin Blood Drive Tweetup, perfectly timed for July 3rd, just before an Independence Day weekend when accidents tend to happen, the need for blood is high and supplies run low.
The push started on June 29th, a Sunday – a mere three days for people to find out about it, to perhaps get some time off from work during a four-day workweek, to decide to participate and for many, to face possible needle fears.
The result?
100 people signed up online for a donation timeslot to come in and give blood; the Blood Center averages around 40 a day.
As I filled out paperwork today to donate, my screener said, “Are you with that Twitter group? There are a LOT of y’all - that’s great!”
Never underestimate the power of a good idea, combined with enthusiastic, tech-savvy individuals and the exponential connections of social media tools like Twitter.
Posted by Mike Chapman on June 16, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Every Dot Connects readers are invited, at a special discount rate, to attend Interactive Austin 2008 - Putting Social Commerce to Work on June 19th at the J.J. “Jake” Pickle Center located at 10100 Burnet Road in Austin, Texas.
The goal of the one-day conference is to give marketing professionals solid strategies for incorporating social commerce (Enterprise 2.0, Social Media, SEO) initiatives into their marketing programs. It will also give them the opportunity to make some valuable connections among trend setters and thought leaders already heavily involved in online businesses and communities.
If you or anyone else from your organization are interested in attending, you can do so at a discounted rate of $109 if you register before the event at www.InteractiveAustin2008.com and enter the following code: BD7632
Seating for the event is expected to to sell out, so it might not be a good idea to wait until the last minute to register!
Those in attendance will be provided with high-impact strategies that will make clear how to integrate social commerce initiatives into current marketing platforms. As thought-leaders in the field of digital marketing and social media, the panelists and speakers will bring this technology down-to-earth with compelling real-world examples and case studies that can be used by companies looking to incorporate digital media and social commerce into their more traditional business and marketing initiatives.
Interactive Austin 2008 will feature a number of informative presentations including:
* The Role of Metrics in Driving Interactive Performance
* Integrating New Media into the Marketing Plan
* How the Convergence of Media Online Affects Marketing and PR
* Managing your Digital Landscape
* Trends and Technologies Driving Social Interaction
* Building a High-Impact User Experience
and more…
The conference will feature two Keynotes, Brian K. Magierski, Co-Founder & Chief Development Officer at nGenera Corporation who will address “Social Commerce and its Impact on Business”; and Pete Hayes, Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Communications at AMD has a presentation entitled: “Get into the Click-Stream: An Alternative to Driving Traffic to your Site”
Interactive Austin promises to be the premier Interactive Marketing event in 2008 and is supported by a number of organizations including FG Squared, Live Oak 360, Apogee Search, The Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, The Interactive Marketing Association, the Austin Technology Council, and Business District Magazine.
If you have questions about the event, feel free to contact Jason Myers, publisher of Business District Magazine at Jason@abdmag.com or (512) 919-4563.
Connie Reece and I, along with many of our friends and colleagues in the community, will be participating.
Like so many others who were working in the Washington D.C. political scene in the nineties, I had heard about the President’s “intern problem” long before the mainstream media reported on it. Word of mouth in the political circles of D.C. is a powerful force.
What happened next caught most of us by surprise, though. An online publication broke the story while the major media outlets waited for their legal teams to give them permission to print or broadcast the story. The relationship between politicians, journalists and their constituencies was forever changed.
Fast forward a decade and the Drudge Report continues to be a force by charting its own course. This recent report in Politico demonstrates how Matt Drudge and the gang don’t plan to fit into any preconceived notions of the online publication being part of an ongoing Republican strategy.
‘Drudge Report keeps campaigns guessing,’ by Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith: ‘ ‘It’s clear to us that Barack Obama has won the Drudge Primary, and it’s one of the most important primaries in this process,’ conceded a senior Clinton aide … Explanations vary for Drudge’s apparent embrace of Obama and coolness to McCain … ‘He’s interested in what brings people to the site – and Obama is great box office,’ said Jim Dyke, the communications director for the Republican National Committee in 2004. … ‘It’s become sort of an international clearing ground of news - not just American news, not just British news, not just European news - anywhere news,’ [Matt Drudge told Britain’s Sky News last year]. ‘This to me is the future, no boundaries.’ ‘
When Jim Dyke refers to “no boundaries,” that also applies to left leaning blogs. The Huffington Post clearly leans left but that doesn’t stop them from breaking news that is potentially damaging to Democrats. HuffPo has shown that its main loyalty is to increasing readership and, consequently, it has had a major impact on the Presidential race at least a couple of times. Blogger Mayhill Fowler, among others, continues to scoop traditional media with a new form of stealth “un-journalism.”
The following is from the Washington Post article Amateur Campaign Blogger Scoops the Pros on her anonymous interview with former President Bill Clinton ‘…in the crush of the crowd in South Dakota last Monday, when she raised the topic of “that hatchet job” on him in Vanity Fair, the former president called the article’s author “slimy,” “sleazy” and a “scumbag,” tightly gripping Fowler’s hand the whole time. “I’m sure he had no idea who I was,” the 61-year-old Tennessee native says.
He quickly found out. Fowler is a Huffington Post blogger whose audiotape of the exchange exploded across the media landscape, prompting Clinton to apologize for his language. And the episode came just two months after Fowler rocked Barack Obama’s campaign by reporting his comments at a closed fundraiser that “bitter” small-town Americans “cling to guns or religion.”
Whether we agree with the techniques being utilized or directions being taken by Drudge and Huffington - neither being beholden to traditional rules and customs of political journalism - we have to admit their very real impact on the process. As those of us who study “social media” can almost uniformly attest, it really pays to be transparent and authentic at all times. And if you’re famous already - hello, Mr. Clinton - you really have no choice but to assume that you are always on the record.
What the case study can’t convey is the series of rapid-fire exchanges with an understandably upset client, Aruni Gunasegaram of Babble Soft, when her new software product received a seriously snarky review by Jennifer Laycock, author of The Lactivist, an influential blog in the market Aruni hoped to reach. Her first email came in while I was at dinner with friends. I started to ignore the flashing red light on my Blackberry but was glad I checked when I found Aruni’s message alerting me to the criticism and asking, “What do I do?”
To her credit, Aruni not only asked for advice, she followed it. She did not respond in anger, but did her homework and learned something about Jennifer, her blog, and her readers. When Aruni did add a comment to The Lactivist, it was well received. She and Jennifer also exchanged e-mails, establishing the basis for a relationship.
Several months later Aruni started her own blog, entrepreMusings, and she and Jennifer follow each other on Twitter now. And to show what a small world it is, I had dinner with Jennifer last month at BloggerSocial08 in New York. We shared a laugh over how the situation had unfolded and how the former critic had become an ally.
Company
Babble Soft, provider of Web and mobile software for parents of newborns
Challenge
A press release for a new product launch was picked up by an influential blogger who wrote a very negative review.
Solution
Every Dot Connects worked with Babble Soft on a strategy to engage the blogger in constructive conversation.
Success
The blogger apologized for the tone of the review and continued to interact with Babble Soft founder via her blog, email and, later, on Twitter and other social networks.
“Insight from hundreds of customer relationships has informed our knowledge of what it takes to reinvent historic business structures. We co-create solutions with our customers — partnering with them every step of the way to help them perform and compete better in the global market.”
These observations were made by Steve Papermaster as he announced the new name for the company previously known as BSG Alliance. The name change to nGenera Corporation spotlights the company’s mission to transform companies into Next Generation Enterprises. nGenera also released its nGen Platform for business innovation, and the first three end-to-end offerings delivered on the platform: nGen Talent, nGen Customer and nGen Leadership.
Late last year Papermaster teamed up with the New Paradigm, a business innovation group led by international thought leader Don Tapscott. The union of the two companies was designed to accelerate the development of their Business Innovation Platform; provide New Paradigm with an appropriate venue to deliver their considerable content; provide Global 2000 enterprises with an immediate and actionable set of business plans, processes and collaborative tools; and help companies transform legacy operations into flexible, next generation enterprises. The recent BusinessWeek Special Report highlights their work.
Our involvement with nGenera, which coincided with the New Paradigm announcement, stems from their belief that social media and online communications are an integral part of this new world of business. Traditional PR is still around, but it is forever changed. nGenera takes seriously the need to have a real social media presence as a part of its communications strategy as they work with their customers moving forward.
The profound business changes brought about by the combination of globalization, the talent crunch and Web 2.0 technologies are reshaping the economy at an astonishing pace. Companies must begin to operate and create customer value in entirely new ways. The nGen Platform offers an answer to this new business reality. It provides Global 2000 companies with a game-changing combination of software-as-a-service, talent and knowledge — packaged into category solutions and delivered using web services — to address fast-traction areas of transformation.
To communicate effectively with its customers, itself, and the world, nGenera is adopting social media in all of its collaborative and co-creative forms. We are honored to be a part of their story.
Posted by Mike Chapman on April 30, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Sometimes I wonder where this social media thing is leading and how it will affect the lives and careers of those of us participating. Several years ago, when I hardly knew what a blog was, I came across a great one here in Texas. I’m happy to report that it’s now part of a true social media success story.
In The Pink Texas, authored by Eileen Smith, aka Pink Lady, is one of the the best political blogs in the state, or anywhere for that matter, and I read them all.
I describe the blog as political because it is actually named for the pink granite from which the state capitol building in Texas is constructed and from which a wealth of political stories emanate. Most of Eileen’s posts are on politics, but ITPT is actually more of a social commentary on everything that catches Eileen’s attention.
As the late Molly Ivins proved during her life and career, Texas politics provides ample material for humorous writing and serious observations. Eileen Smith has taken Molly’s spirit into the world of social media. Eileen is a great writer, has a shrewd understanding of our culture and politics, and no one comes up with better headlines day after day.
When I drop in to see what’s happening on her blog, Eileen may be defending her choice for U.S. President against an angry mob of comment-makers, picking on the Texas Governor, or giving a great review of the latest episode of the Bachelor. It’s always funny, always smart, and she has a bevy of followers who regularly comment on her posts. Most of them use funny pseudonyms while providing politically incorrect insights of their own.
As far as I can tell, she never censors anyone even if they’re anonymous and rude. The community she has developed is fiercely loyal and seems to police its own. If someone is over the top in their comments, everyone gets on them. And don’t dare pick on the Pink Lady herself unless you can handle a virtual tongue lashing worthy of the strictest Texas schoolmarm from her followers.
If Twitter is, as Connie Reece has noted, a virtual water cooler, then In The Pink Texas is a virtual Texas bar where folks get together and let off a little steam throughout the day.
Just about everyone working at the Texas Capitol keeps an eye on In The Pink Texas. If Eileen doesn’t report the latest rumor, then one of the many members of the ITPT community probably will. It’s the wild west of journalism and those who ignore it do so at their own risk.
What makes Eileen’s story a true social media success is that her personal blog, which is part labor of love and part political addiction, drew the attention of the editors of Texas Monthly, a world-class publication based in Austin. This past year Texas Monthly hired Eileen to edit its online publication, TexasMonthly.com, where she is also thriving.
I don’t have a business relationship with Eileen, but she has spoken at the Austin Social Media Club, where she was great. I would encourage all of you to check her out and comment on the Texas Monthly blog and, if you’re adventurous, In The Pink Texas.
It may be presumptuous of me to do so, but, if I’m allowed as a Friend of the W-List, I would like to suggest that Eileen Smith would be a great addition to the list.
Posted by Mike Chapman on April 24, 2008 at 11:16 am
In just a couple of weeks it’ll be Mother’s day and for more than 10,000 moms who serve in the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’ll no doubt be a tough one.
The project involves enhancing Trish’s efforts to communicate by email with the troops while they are separated from their families. Qipit’s contribution is to provide a free and easy way to add a personal touch to the email.
On this Mother’s Day we’re all going to ramp up our efforts to reach out to the troops, especially the moms but not only the moms, and line up personalized, “qipitized” emails.
I encourage all of our readers to link up to Conrad’s site and Trish’s site to learn more. If you have any trouble, DM Conrad on Twitter. He can be reached @hametner.
It may not seem like much, but every little bit helps. I’m a military brat and I remember well the impact our care packages had on my Dad. It’s not as easy to do those same kind of mailings anymore, so please think about sending an email with a personalized message attached.
Anyone can join eMail Our Military. It’s easy. Just go here. I’m also sure that if you would like to do some artwork using Qipit, and aren’t sure about signing up for eMOM, we could use it in our efforts as well.
Posted by Mike Chapman on April 16, 2008 at 8:09 am
I don’t usually do this, but I’m going to re-post a piece from the Austin Social Media Club site published today so that we can get the word out to as many folks as possible about a meeting this Friday.
~Mike
Organizational Meeting - Friday, April 18, Cafe Caffeine, Noon
In 2006, when I first heard Connie Reece talking about this phenomenon called social media and then later include me in the start-up of the Social Media Club, I had no idea just how quickly so many good things would result from it. To avoid using this post for overly blatant self-promotion, I’ll summarize by saying that we’ve gotten really busy over a very short period of time.
Being involved in the Social Media Club has been extremely effective for us in creating relationships and forming networks across the Austin area and around the world. In fact, Connie is now the Executive Director of the entire international Social Media Club.
Conrad Hametner, Cynthia Baker, Chris Leonard, Kelley Burrus, Brenda Thompson, Clint Howell, whurley, and all of the other co-founders and supporters who’ve been involved since its inception are enjoying the benefits of being involved in the Austin SMC.
We’ve had some excellent programs including John Moore of Brand Autopsy, the Dell Digital Media team, panels on politics with Jon Lebkowsky, Eileen Smith and Sam McCabe, how to create social media news room, Adam Weinroth of Pluck, Second Life, and much more.
We’ve gotten busy with so many new projects, however, that we’ve let our meetings slide for a few months here in Austin. We’re admitting, in public, that we need help. We need even more people involved in order to take the Austin SMC to the next level.
We’re meeting this Friday, at Cafe Caffeine around noon, so we can brainstorm and continue the conversation while looking to the future. We have no preconceived ideas - well, maybe a few - but are quite confident that the results will be better than we could plan or manage alone.
If you’re interested in collaborating on the next phase of SMC, please be there. Cafe Caffeine hosts Jelly in Austin every Friday - one of the main reasons we picked the day and location - and the atmosphere and attitude is exactly what we’re looking for. In case you’re not familiar with it, Jelly is a casual coworking environment which is also international in scope.
Even if you can’t be there, join us anyway by commenting here. As all of us who are a part of social media know, this is a team effort and everyone who is interested is invited. We look forward to seeing you or hearing from you this Friday.
~Mike
P.S. Just about everyone mentioned in this post Twitters. You can follow me @mikechapman and I’ll introduce you around if you’re new. We’ll be twittering during the meeting on Friday and you can join in the conversation from anywhere.
Posted by Connie Reece on March 27, 2008 at 11:08 am
note: above video has no sound; animation only
This is an update to my recent post, Five White Men Talk About Social Media. When last we visited the little drama surrounding our local Chamber of Commerce event with a surprising lack of diversity, I had been invited to be on the panel. The following day the invitation was withdrawn because I’m not a member of the Chamber. (Brenda Thompson, part of our Every Dot Connects team, is a Chamber member and the one who originally brought the event to my attention.) Also, we were in error that “five white men” constituted the panel; there are only four of them.
The Chamber’s policy of featuring members at their events is reasonable, even laudable. While it does not excuse the lack of diversity, I certainly have no quibble with their policy. I do have quibbles about the content that will be presented, or at least the way it is described in promotional materials for “Today’s New Marketing Tools.” One of the panelists, a flyer says, “specializes in using new media and viral tactics which leave an indelible impression on a target audience.” Another “advises clients on how they can exploit digital and social media …”
You get the drift. I can’t help thinking it sounds like tacking some new buzzwords over traditional marketing methods.
Of course, my opinion is colored by my immersion in the world of social media. My business partner, Mike Chapman, and I do social media consulting, and I serve as the executive director of the international Social Media Club. I also just agreed to be a contributing author to the 2008 edition of The Age of Conversation, subtitled “Why Don’t People Get It?”
Yes, I am blatantly self-promoting here. That was, after all, the gist of comments to my “Five White Men” post: women are not as likely as men to promote their own work. Advice taken. The comments, by the way, are well worth reading, and I appreciate those who took the time to add their thoughts to mine.
We’ve never seen a female U.S. President. Great Britain elected Prime Minister in Margaret Thatcher. Indira Gandhi served as Prime Minister of India. Finland, a country with the highest number of scientists per capita in the world, elected Conan O’Brien look-alike Tarja Halonen as president. Although the Catholics in Argentina will not see a female priest, they did elect Cristina Fernandez de Kirschner, who is following in the footsteps of her husband and former president Nestor. Pakistan, a primarily Muslim nation, elected Benazir Bhutto as Prime Minister in 1988 and she was leading another election until she was assassinated last December. This is supposedly the freest place on Earth for women, and yet, a Muslim nation elected a female for a leader 20 years before we even get a viable candidate for President.
It’s an uncomfortable subject for many. It cuts down to a deeply personal level in us, a group already made up of uncomfortable, fidgety socially awkward nerds, geeks and dweebs. Uncomfortable though it may be, we’ve got to look at this.
Brenda Thompson and I will be attending the Chamber event on April 30. I look forward to learning a thing or two from four white men who are very successful in their respective fields. Seriously. It just won’t be about exploiting social media, because I know just how unsuccessful attempts to manipulate the conversation (buzzword alert) can be.
I also intend to follow up on the tongue-in-cheek recommendation of Jackie Huba, who left this comment on my original post: “Maybe we should do a women-only panel on social media for the Social Media Club. And maybe at the last minute we’ll invite a man to be on the panel.”
Stay tuned for that news, which will be posted on Austin Social Media Club as soon as I can get with Jackie to determine a date. If you want to talk about “Today’s New Marketing Tools,” you couldn’t ask for a better presenter than Jackie.
And in the meantime, if you’re in Austin, plan on attending SMC’s April 17 event featuring Jon Lebkowsky, an authority on social media, online community, technoculture, Web strategy, and Internet trends. Jon helped pioneer both the theories and the software behind many of today’s new marketing tools and technologies.
You might say he is One White Guy Who Really Understands Social Media.
Posted by Connie Reece on March 23, 2008 at 11:16 pm
A few months ago I did some serious pruning on my Google Reader, which was choked by an overgrowth of blog feeds. I’d been trying to stay around 200-250, but somehow the number kept climbing toward 300. One day I decided I had officially hit Information Overload. I was either spending so much time reading that I had no time to write, or I was feeling guilty for clicking on “mark all as read.”
Choices were difficult, but I managed to cut back to 50 RSS feeds. It meant I missed reading some people whose writing I really liked, but it became much more manageable and enjoyable.
Now I’m trying another tactic: cutting RSS feeds even further, yet increasing the number of blogs I read. Here’s how I’m accomplishing that.
1. Twitter links. Many of the bloggers I regularly read are on Twitter, so I have unsubscribed from their feed. Whenever they tweet a link to their blog, I click to open it in a new tab. At some point during the day, I’ll skim through the posts and close out the tabs. I try to comment on several blogs every day.
2. Instapaper. When I come across what looks like a good read but I don’t have time for it at the moment, I click on Read Later in my browser toolbar. This handy bookmarklet creates a personalized newspaper with the links I’ve saved. When “later” rolls around, I can browse through the links and Skip, Edit or Delete them. By the way, Instapaper was developed for the iPhone, so it’s a great mobile tool as well as Web app.
3. Social Media Today. Because social media is my primary business, many of the feeds previously in my reader were from people writing in the field. Most of those same bloggers, however, are published at Social Media Today. I pulled their Vortex widget into my home page for Netvibes, which has replaced my Google Reader. With one click I can check the latest posts from scores of bloggers.
4. Marketing Profs Daily Fix. Many of the top voices in marketing are featured here, so I have unsubscribed from their individual blogs in favor of reading them at the Daily Fix. Of course, when I read an article by one of my favorite marketing bloggers, I often click through to their blog to browse around and see what catches my eye.
5. Alltop.com is Guy Kawasaki’s latest venture. I was flattered to be included both in the section for Social Media and the Twitterati, but I did not think I would have much use for the site myself. Recently, though, I’ve been using it to find new voices in areas outside my primary interest of social media. Want to find information on personal finance or small business, for example? Alltop.com is a good starting point.
So what’s left in my feed reader? Mostly fun stuff, like I Can Has Cheezburger and Crazy Aunt Purl, “the true-life diary of a thirty-something, newly divorced, displaced Southern obsessive-compulsive knitter who has four cats. (Because nothing is sexier than a divorced woman with four cats.)” Laurie Perry’s ramblings have turned into one of my all-time favorite blogs.
The item I check most frequently in my feed reader is what I call my “me-monitor.” It’s where I subscribe to feeds based on search results for my name and our blog name.
So far I am actually reading more posts, by more authors, and I have given up worrying whether I’ve missed something important. If it’s truly important, I’ll come across it some place besides my feed reader.
I’m still a candidate for social networking rehab, but at least I’ve broken my RSS addiction. How about you?
We get this question a lot at Every Dot Connects — “What the heck is Twitter, and how can something that sounds so goofy possibly do anything useful?”
