Greg Swan

Archive for September, 2008|Monthly archive page

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I’m quoted in the MSP Business Journal today

In In the News, Social Media on September 26, 2008 at 9:19 pm

msp_bizjourn_sep26.JPG
Sites: not just for personal connections anymore
Minneapolis / St. Paul Business Journal, September 26, 2008

While many firms historically have blocked employees from signing onto sites such as Facebook at work, that’s now something some companies are beginning to rethink, said Greg Swan, digital strategist for Weber Shandwick’s interactive, social and emerging media practice in Bloomington.

“If employees are telling 100 of their friends that their job is the best job in the world, that’s good marketing,” he said.

While online social-networking sites may lead to business connections, many users say they enjoy using sites just to meet people with common interests. That approach can ultimately be the best way to find prospective job candidates or clients…

Overall, sites including Twitter and Facebook are worth using regardless of whether a connection leads to a new client.

“I’ve made more real-life friends in the Twin Cities through social networks than at professional organizations,” Swan said. “I can seek out like-minded people and build real-life relationships.”

Read it online here.

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MIMA Summit Blog Carnival: #4

In Social Media on September 26, 2008 at 4:01 pm

mima_feed.gif As part of the MIMA Summit Blog Carnival, here’s a quick post addressing on of this week’s topics…

Topic #1: Keynote presenter, Ze Frank says, “You have a paradigm shift coming around. There is so much that happens as soon as you release anything — you get all this feedback…you get unexpected usage patterns, you get requests for new things, you get crises.” So, whose job is it to respond to all of these feedback, and how should they go about doing it?

Unfortunately, the responsibility for this often falls to the marketing department. Don’t get me wrong, PR folks (like me) have the skills, persistence and collaborative spirit to help foster these conversations.

But feedback from your stakeholders is a essentially a customer service issue, and those in the CSR departments are typically well equipped and trained to handle incoming feedback — including utilizing predefined channels for pushing this feedback UP to the upper eschelons of companies.

However, CSR folks are mostly accustomed to inputs and only those inputs within a certain limited scope. They don’t go looking for trouble, must respond via script, and assume no news is good news.

The 2.0 culture, however, blog swarms and memes issues that matter to companies, whether they’re listening or not. Users expect big brands to be monitoring what they’re saying — and more importantly — care (!) and do something about it. This is where marketing folks, particular public relations, are leading the way when it comes to listening to stakeholders and creating opportunities for dialogue and..yes..feedback.

But listening is only the first step. Per Ze Frank’s original question, once you have all the feedback — how to respond?

Many companies are appointing/hiring an online community manager to serve as both the face of the company to online stakeholders and as the advocate of those stakeholders to company management. There has been a lot written recently about online community managers, and it’s something I stress for many clients who find their brand is being heavily discussed online. Only by going fully transparent and jumping into the discussion can a company best listen, participate and react to the feedback.

The other, perhaps more important, step is to honor the feedback you receive, even if you don’t like it.

In parallel, I have a post up today re: blogger outreach based on my learnings at BlogWorld & New Media Expo here: Blogger Outreach: The College Party Analogy. And now back to your regularly scheduled music blogging…

Read all the Carnival posts here.

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My Social Studies Posts Today

In Social Media, Social Studies on September 26, 2008 at 8:40 am

Twitter’s Election Tool (see link for post)

Blogger Outreach: The College Party Analogy (cross posted with Social Studies)

This was my second year attending BlogWorld & New Media Expo. Starting with the opening keynote on Friday, it was clear 2008 is the year marketers are formally staking their claim on social media. As more of us realize the power, permeance and influence social media has on both our clients and personal brand, the opportunities for creative, experimental, influential and fun (!) campaigns continue to present themselves.

Presented by industry guru Dave Taylor, the Executive and Entrepreneur Opening Keynote featured his “State of the Blogosphere.” As Dave traced the method of storytelling to the beginning of civilization, I appreciated his comments about bias and subjectivity – two of the biggest arguments we face regarding social media — tracing back to the first blush of communication.

As expression evolved — from Anne Frank’s diary to spray painted graffiti, blogs to social networks — Dave reminded us the future of social media is linked to the past and has its roots in basic 1:1 communication.

I have eight posts worth of takeaways to share from the conference, but I’ll start with something you can put into use today. This past weekend, Dave was first among many to talk about blogger outreach: answering the new age question, “How do I pitch bloggers?”

Most organizations (including ours) have an official blog outreach policy and plenty of expertise to share when it comes to sharing client messages with online advocates.

But the analogy Dave, Jason Falls and others were sharing – while not necessarily new or cutting-edge – will hopefully help you put your outreach responsibilities into perspective…

A best practice for engaging with your clients’ online stakeholders is for you, personally, to already have a relationship with them (yep, just like traditional PR 101). That means reading their blog, leaving comments, sending them e-mail feedback and tips when it’s not linked to a client. Because you are a valuable member of the community and the blogger (and his/her commenters) know you, they will excuse and hopefully welcome a bit of self-promotion or quick client heads-up. The best case if that you’ve knowingly added to the content and conversation at the most strategic time.

The worst case for engaging with bloggers on behalf of a client is finding yourself in a situation where you need to reach out to a blogger cold. You’ve never e-mailed the blogger, and they don’t know you from that businessman from Nigeria offering a lucrative business proposition. You’ve never left a comment on this blog and therefore have no stake or reputation in the community. The worst case is you pop in to naïvely “pitch” the blogger about something they’re not interested in and then disappear again.

The metaphor many were using at BlogWorld is a college party. You know, the kind of get-together where you may know a few people but are still on the lookout for a new friend or that special someone (wink wink, nudge nudge).

Now when you encounter a party, you walk in the door and say “Hi” to the host of the party first. You don’t immediately go up to a group of people talking in a circle, interrupt their conversation and say something like, “Hi, I’m Stingray from Giant Marketing Agency, and this is my client, Soap. Do you use Soap? Check out Soap.com.”

Instead, you walk around the room to get a feel for the party vibe. You may stand in the corner and wait for a break of tactful opportunity — your turn to introduce yourself. Eventually, you may mention where you work or what types of clients you work with, but it’s rarely the first thing you throw out there when meeting new people.

You can imagine the reaction if you walked up to a group of chatting football players and jumped into their conversation with a story about your painted bead collection. Now there will always be exceptions (Coco loves his beads and football), but I hope you can understand the metaphor.

I’ll even take it a step further. You don’t just find yourself at a party. First, you have to know about the party. You may have learned of it via a friend (word of mouth), a formal invitation (perhaps a flyer or e-mail?) or perhaps it was a listed event (calendar). You probably needed directions to get there, and you may have asked around before you showed up to research the dress code, what kinds of people will be attending (athletes? cheerleaders? A/V club?) and you might have prepared some talking points in advance to chat about.

To put it more simply, in the real world (IRL, as we geeks call it), you would do your homework before showing up somewhere you will be expected to communicate –- especially on behalf of a client.

Hopefully this metaphor better helps illustrate that social media outreach is no different than conversations at a party. A common theme at BlogWorld was the new importance of being part of the community in today’s PR.

And while the openness and variety of personalities, styles and opinions often present risks, the opportunity to face and embrace online advocate bias and subjectivity is more than worth the investment.

So get out and join the conversation (and save your beer cup for the next party).

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My Two-Year Old Social Networker

In Social Media, Social Studies on September 11, 2008 at 9:43 pm

Cross-posted from Social Studies...

My two-year old son has a Facebook page. He loves to update his status, share his favorite books and music, and share pictures from his trips to the zoo and Disney World. When he uploads videos to YouTube, he often sends his grandparents e-mails from his very own Gmail account.

Of course, it’s really his mom and I posting all of this intimate information for the world to see. In fact, before he was born, my wife and I registered both of our boy and girl baby names in Gmail to be sure we had them reserved. We were staking out our offspring’s digital property before birth.

And yes, we’ve had a discussion about the line between private and public. We don’t include last names, locations or personal information. We assume that by age 8 or so we’ll turn over the username and password to his e-mail and social network accounts (what Phil Wilson calls a social mitzvah), just like my parents gave me my very own house key at that age.

But why? Why are we compelled to experiment with our own little Truman Show?

Our family and friends are spread across the country and rarely get together. Social media tools allow my parents in Florida to see my son’s first tooth. Facebook allows his aunts and uncles to “friend” him and instantly be notified of his status updates in a social medium they prefer over e-mail for information. Web cams allow us to video chat with anyone with an Internet connection. And when I travel for work, I’m able to check in and see his smile firsthand (just like in the commercials…awww).

Social media continues to offer us the tools to break down geographical barriers and open an unparalleled level of interpersonal communication.

Yesterday’s New York Times had a great article titled “Twittering From the Cradle” that lists social network sites like TotSpot, Kidmondo and Lil’Grams that give parents the tools to share firsts, memorable moments and minutiae with everyone or a select list.

As digital natives begin becoming parents, it only makes sense they will apply these social mediums to their kids’ lives. But don’t feel bad if you keep a baby book made of paper or like to print off your digital photos; we’re still a few years out from virtual preschool.

However, if you’re going to register your pet on Dogster.com to digitally befriend pooches from the dog park, surely your kids deserve a digital playdate, too.

Where do things go from here? We haven’t bought my son his .name URL quite yet. Maybe the next one.

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Hurricane Blog Buzz (August 31-September 7)

In Social Studies on September 8, 2008 at 9:48 pm

Cross-posted from Social Studies:

Above is a graph I pulled from Radian6 to see how prevalent blogsphere buzz has been surrounding the recent/anticipated hurricanes in the past week.

Unsurprisingly, Hurricane Katrina, the worst hurricane our generation has witnessed, has been a theme of note throughout the past week.

It’s interesting to see entries regarding Hurricane Gustav fall off over the weekend and posts about Hurricane Ike picking up, and although New Orleans was frequently mentioned through Thursday, now Florida is getting more mentions.

I threw in Republican National Convention (RNC) and gas/fuel/gasoline as it relates to the coverage, and you can track some complementary bumps as bloggers mention how the severe weather has impacted both politics and the economy.

My favorite anecodotal observation: you can see a big drop in postings over Labor Day (Sept 1) while everyone — including me — was out fishing.

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I’m in MinnPost today

In In the News, Social Media on September 8, 2008 at 9:27 pm

I’m quoted in John Reinan’s MinnPost article today, “New Media Means New Market Strategies.”

There’s also the control factor. Businesses are used to controlling their own messages, and the advent of the Internet has meant a loss of that control. If someone wants to start a blog called “I Hate Company X,” they can. Yet rather than jump in and join the discussion, many companies simply hunker down and hope nobody notices them. That’s hardly a recipe for successful marketing.

I discussed this with Greg Swan, a digital strategist for Weber Shandwick, the Bloomington public relations firm. Swan was a pioneer blogger and often speaks to professional groups on digital communication.

“All of your customers and stakeholders can communicate now,” Swan said. “That’s great if they love your product. But if they have a complaint, they can instantly find hundreds of others who feel the same way and band together.”

Getting the message out
The answer, Swan said, is PR 101: communication and relationship-building.

“I ask companies, ‘Do you have someone participating in the online world?’ Companies should have a community manager — someone whose job it is to engage and represent the company online,” Swan said. Sprint, Microsoft and Disney are among the companies that have created such positions.

Getting your message out also requires the proper tools, he said. Companies need a social media room — a place where information about the company, its products and its messages is easily accessible to anyone who wants to use it. If a reporter on deadline is looking for a product photo, she doesn’t need to call anyone — she can download one from the social media room.

Swan said he recently visited a major company that had strict Web filters. Employees couldn’t access MySpace, Facebook or Gmail. These are today’s crucial communication tools, and blocking them to employees makes about as much sense as limiting which area codes they can call.

New media also require an investment of time. In the old days, a company could send a press release to the newspaper and count on reaching everyone who mattered. Now, getting that message out might mean slowly building relationships with a dozen bloggers who bristle the moment they think they’re getting pitched.

But the effort can pay off big. Bloggers and their readers tend to be passionate about their subject matter, and the use of tracking software has begun to reveal how broad their reach is. The head of a major Twin Cities ad agency recently told me that his researchers had determined there were 10 bloggers about breast cancer who reached 10 million people within four degrees of separation.

Think of that: By reaching 10 bloggers, the ripple effect could get your message out to 10 million people.

Stories like that show just how much media and marketing have changed, Swan said.

“Three years ago, there were lots of stories about how important blogs were becoming,” he said. “No one’s talking anymore about how blogs are important. It’s understood.”

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Rage Against the Machine’s RNC Viral Video

In Social Media, Social Studies, Viral Video on September 4, 2008 at 9:52 pm

Cross-posted with Social Studies:

Fans of Rage Against the Machine turned out to see the controversial L.A. band play a set at the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol during a non-partisan concert surrounding the Republican National Convention Tuesday.

Due to a number of reasons — timing, crowd control, politics — the band was not allowed to take the stage. So instead of performing on the stage as scheduled, they pushed their way to the front of the crowd and sang a few songs a capella through a borrowed police megaphone.

A friend of mine recorded some video of the performance and uploaded it to YouTube; then I posted it to the Minneapolis Metblog, and from there it spread like… well, like a virus.

As a benchmark, I know the video had 74 views when I first watched it Tuesday morning. As a result of coverage on Current TV, LA Times, Rolling Stone, Boing Boing, Reddit and others, it currently has 195,000 views.

Why did this video spread so virally? It was a myriad of factors: compelling political views, raw anti-authoritive messaging, a famous band and the kicker — nearly zero coverage by the mainstream media.

Instead, a music blogger armed with a camera became a journalist covering a breaking news story.

And now you too can watch the video (language warning) and even download mp3s of the songs…

Rage Against the Machine : “Bulls on Parade: RNC A CAPELLA @ MN STATE CAPITOL” [mp3]

Some days I love the Internet way too much.

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