Digital Influence Mapping Project

Where is the Perfect Social Media Conference (for Marketers)?

There are too many social media conferences.

We are in a recession. Budgets on discretionary spending like travel and training are tight. And yet there are more social media conferences per square conference facility than before the crisis. This abundance of events speaks to a few trends in the marketplace:

• Marketers are taking social media seriously and want desperately to get a handle on how to do it well.

• An entire consulting industry - a bit of cottage industry - has sprung up over the years around social media and these folks bake in conference commitments in their "business plans". They must attend to drive awareness and business.
• Professional conference planners see the urgency around social media inside the enterprise and have shifted gears away from less popular subjects.

Many of these events are just no good.

The trends don't inherently deliver a great experience. I have been to a few this year, some that I would consider very valuable, some that were engaging or otherwise worthwhile and some that were just plain a waste of time. Now I seek the Perfect Social Media Conference.

Problems

• Same speakers: The trends I described force the same speakers out in front of folks again and again. Two problems with that. The first is obvious in that you hear the same key points - usually intended for newcomers - over and over again.

• Designed around speakers: The second problem - most conferences are designed around speakers - their needs, their credentials, their willingness to travel for free to speak. In today's economy, conferences should be designed around the learning experience they deliver for the paying attendee not around the speakers. This makes it difficult for the professional conference business with no skin in the subject matter to pull off any type of event that delivers significant value. All they can do is assemble speakers - usually the same ones - and hope that enough of them are informative, entertaining or inspiring.

• Over narrowing of the niche: One of the reasons I got a lot out of 140 characters, WOMM U. and even We Media was the diversity of the program and the participants. It wasn't all marketers. While I generally benefit from a marketing focus, marketing does not live in a vacuum. Too many conferences have an uneducated view of a profession. They believe that so long as all of the speakers come from the "marketing" organzation, or that all of them claim to be "bloggers" that they have created a focused event. I look at conferences as learning events. I learn from storytellers, media entrepeneurs, artists, non-profit advocates and more.

The Perfect Recipe for a Social Media Conference
There is no "perfect," but here are the ingredients for an event that is worth this brand marketer's investment of time and money:

• A program that is designed around learning not around speakers: if you start by outlining what your attendees will "know" and be able to "do" upon leaving, you stand a better chance of creating a compelling experience filled with great discussion leaders, engaging formats and tangible deliverables.

• Rigorous case studies with results: nothing teaches professionals better that really great stories of how others have done it. Many conferences include cases but take no care to ensure that rigor. We need business and marcom problems, insights that drive a program, creativity and real results. Too many people dress up a collection of social media tactics with no clear impact as a case study. That approach serves no one, not even the novice. As for results, I would argue we need good and bad. As someone reminded me, "what do we learn from success? Nothing."  I need case studies where we are not afraid to talk about failures and where we learned valuable lessons.

• Practical training from, get this, practitioners that is clearly distinguished between beginner and advanced: how many events have you gone to where the content and delivery was too basic to be of use. You tell yourself, "well, I guess that was designed for those new to social media marketing."  There is nothing wrong with social media 101, although if ever there was too well-trod territory, it is the introduction to social media and word of mouth marketing. identifying whether a session is intended for those just starting out or those with years of experience can only help set and meet the expectations of all those involved. 

• I need to hear practical lessons from those who actually do the work. If you are listening to someone tell you how social media marketing works and they have spoken at more than 6 events in one year, look a little closer. Chances are they are really a professional pundit with a shallow set of real experiences to pull from. Social media marketing is a new discipline that can best be learned from doing vs. observing. Look for those really doing the work for insight.

• Surprising inspiration: Conference organizers need to think long and hard about who will surprise participants espcially when those attendees are jaded marketers. Getting the CMO of brand X to speak is all well and good but often the real inspiration comes out of left field. Ray Bradbury once keynoted an unusual conference staged by Silicon Graphics way back when. I never would have expected such an inspiring talk about creativity and marketing.

• A social platform for discussion: conferences are as much about networking and being "social" in the service of business as they are about content delivery. Too many conferences don't plan for social interaction either by jamming in too many content delivery sessions (that "speaker-driven" mentality, again) or they rely on big meals as enough of a social platform. How can a conference plan around networking and even facilitate it? When I was with Discovery Channel some years back, we participated in a 'digital day' at MIT Media Lab (we were sponsors of the Lab). We broke down into groups of 12 or so and my group which also included Walt Mossberg participated in an hour-long exercise with a professor and his grad students studying filtering as it relates to email and messaging. That joint activity brought us together and gave us instant common ground for discussion. Not everything needs to be so structured nor does it need to just be the usual lunch hour here everyone spins off to address email business.

 
There are plenty of other things that can contribute to a worthwhile experience. Some things that help:

• I like smaller gatherings. Once you break the 500 person mark, I get a little numb.
• Focused sponsor exhibits where as much care has gone into curating the sponsors as teh sessions, themselves
• Diverse group of participants
• Easy to get to location (relatively inexpensive and a near airport)

These are the key ingredients I will look for in the events through the end of the year.  If you know of one, please let me know. Thanks.

A Photography Brand Gets More Experiential

I always loved the Kodak photo moments I once saw - brand yellow dots on the ground in a public park or sightseeing stop."Kodak Moments" has since earned its way into our vernacular as anything worth photographing.

Now another brand is taking that experience concept farther. Canon is running what looks like a pretty routine photography contest online called, Canon Photography in the Parks, between now and September.  What's supercool is the Workshops they are running in Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Acadia throughout the summer. Travelers can shoot with Canon cameras and lenses and even rub shoulders with some expert photographers like Darrell Gulin.

Ultimately this is not new. This is the 4th year Canon has done this. We often overlook some great solid brand experiences trying to find the next new thing. I merely loved it because of a brand providing a useful and real-world experience for its fans. Not sure how many people will show up for the 60 or so workshops throughout the summer but given a good experience they could all turn into word of mouth ambassadors worth their weight in gold....

Thanks to Springwise....

Helping Me Get Green Simply & Socially

A lot of brands are jumping on the bandwagon by embracing issues surrounding green, sustainability, and good-fo-the-environment. Agencies (including Ogilvy with the Greenery ) are setting up prcatices to better communicate 'greenness'. Some brands are sincere and have changed business practices to provide a more "green" approach and impact. Others just want the credit.

One thing many could explore is to help all of us citizens improve our personal impact on the environment. That means giving us tools or information that we can use. I doubt anyone believes this is anyone's job but rather will succed when we all do our part. Together we can win. And that is good news for most brands who want to build stronger bonds with their customers. By being of-use to us (customers) in terms of helping us to reduce our carbon footprint, for example, brands help us achieve something we find valuable. That's a brand-bonding opportunity.

Climate Culture Makes it Easy

Climate Culture is a Web2.0 social network-enhanced tool to help me reduce my family carbon footprint. It was developed by a group of Ivy League-plus grads and it's board of advisores is dominated by Yalie profs (oh, and Ed Begley - who apparently dropped the "Jr." from hsi name a while back).

On the surface, Climate Culture's main attraction appears to be a virtual representation of your world as an island. That's not the best thing it has going for it. In fact, that "virtual space" visual was one reason I was sure that I would hate it. 3D interfaces that mimic the space we breathe in are not good interfaces for most utility computing. When we were developing some of the earliest interactive TV shopping mall interfaces in 1991, we tried these 3D replicas of malls that were just horrible user experiences. Imagine if Amazon required you to walk down a hallway, open a door, "talk" to an avatar....you get the picture.

But Climate Culture's virtual island makes sense and, more importantly, doesn't suck. That's mostly because it's not the main interface. They use very simple and smart Web 2.0 menus. As you calculate your initial carbon footprint, you get to walk through a terrific list of tactics to reduce it. This list is magic. They are helping me think of ways to take actions - from big to small - and then giving me an idea of the impact. I earn points for answering questions and can reduce my footprint by acknowledging those things I already do or are willing to commit to doing.  (Not sure I can realistically 'reduce my Internet use' but that's only good for 51 lbs of CO2 a year whereas using a solar-powered lawnmower is good for 63).

What else could they do:

• Make the list more portable. I want to access in Facebook and on my Blackberry.

• Give me a way to challenge someone within the community or, more importantly, someone from the social Web to meet goals (e.g. "I bet I can earn 100o points by Friday...")
• Let me advocate for Climate Culture. Give me badges or apps to embed in my blogs et al.
• Create a sponsorable application for brands. Allow Brand X to show their support for Climate Culture and the mission of helping us all reduce our footprint while highlighting what they or their product contributes. 

How to Create the Next Video on the Web: Creative Marketing Models

This post is part of a 5-part series. How can we all be successful with the next wave of video on the Web whether you are a show producer or a brand? Creative Marketing Models are one of four important priorities. 

Previous posts talked about getting the show and the audience engagement right. But none of this matters unless you have a innovative and effective advertiser model. Pre-roll, post-roll, surround banners and product integration seems to be where we are at right now. Advertisers value click throughs and impressions tied to views. But even views are open to interpretation. Revision3 recently made a higher commitment by defining views as complete views. It's likely that few other producers do that.   

Beyond Product Integration

The product integration in magazine format shows like TMI weekly  and EpicFu are the most interesting models. Still, I am not sure that product integration in narrative story is as flexible or impactful. It's one thing to put Ford vehicles in network TV shows but quite another to drop product in the background of a niche dramatic video online. We need more.

Engagement

Advertising value is changing. Some marketers understand that and are working hard to put a value on engagement. The time has come for show producers to get more creative for how they deliver engagement with the brands that support them. We need to think in terms of "marketing" not simply advertising for the brand involved in a video program. If you want to ptoduce a show or are already doing so, what is the story you tell advertisers about the ad opportunity? If it's just impressions or even click-to-action your wasting everyone's time. If you are talking about engagement via product integration than you are on the right track.

But you need to go farther. The most entrepeneurial online producers I know come from the Joss Whedon school of creating a show as multimedia brand. That means the video program is but one touchpoint and experience. Email updates and alerts, merchandise stores, related media like music and pictures, live events (like Diggnation's meetups) are all part of the the engagement. Weave sponsors in there. Show them solutions at all levels of the funnel - drive some qualified leads or relevant inquiries. Make them a friend of the show brand and therefore a potential friend of the particpants - then your getting something done.

Idea Bar #12 Next Video on the Web: Threadless Meets Next New Networks

This post is part of a 5-part series. How can we all be successful with the next wave of video on the Web whether you are a show producer or a brand? Crowdsourcing topics is one of four important priorities and is technically one of my Idea Bar posts.  

This series started with this core idea. That's what makes it part of theIdea Bar series which is full of good ideas - each driven by expertise and naivete. Ultimately this simple idea led me to want to throw out my own model on how niche video programs can succeed online.

Threadless as you all likely know is the quintessential Cinderella story for crowdsourcing. T-shirt designers post designs, the crowd votes them up (or not) and the top designs are produced and sold.

Why not do this with your show? In the previous post on Focusing on Value to Niche Communities, I covered catering to the needs of a defined, lean-forward affinity group. Why not ask them for ideas and votes on what would make a compelling show for them? What would make them want to susbcribe? Just like Threadless has the "I'd Buy That" button, our show marketplace would have a "I'd Watch That"  and an "I'd Watch That Every Week" voting buttons. The principle is the same - prove there is an audience before going into costly production. What a great way to get marketers on board  before you have actually killed yourself bootstrapping production and building an audience.

Now lest you think I am slipping into the territory of the movie, The Player, where the studio exec decrys the need of writers by saying all we have to do is pick out a story from the paper and, "bam" there's our script, let me clarify. Let the crowd tell us what they would find compelling - what topics, what participants, what format - and then let the creative juices flow. We are not talking "exquisite corpse" here.

The biggest barrier to this model is likely to be "ego." Many show creators are trying to express an idea they are personally invested in. It's tough to become open to the audience. Beyond the poor quality of many videos, this issue - which can be called "control" - might be one of the larger barriers to success. Most filmmakers I know are passionate storytellers first. To win online, you must be passionate about your audience first. Diggnation seems to do a good job of this.

Next New Networks started with the promise of a hundred online shows for all sorts of audiences. They have quite a few today but more like 15 than a hundred. What would happen if married that ambition with a crowdsourced model? 

How to Create the Next Video on the Web: Niche, Affinity Communities

 

This post is part of a 5-part series. How can we all be successful with the next wave of video on the Web whether you are a show producer or a brand? Connecting with niche, affinity communities is one of four important priorities.  

The vast "interwebs" has been potent fertilizer on an English garden-growth of niche communities online. We all belong to multiple tribes some of which are more clearly distinuishable and formal than others. We may love a particular music artist, a passion like WarHammer, a craft like t-shirt design, travel to Indonesian islands, or whetever. Some are tighter communities than others. Star Trek fans waiting for the next JJ Abram's movie are a tight group yet they also belong to a broader 'tribe' of Sci-fi fans who are known for their engagement with shows and events. That tribe intersects with the comic fan tribe who may be watching the Next New Networks Pulp Secret. "Crafting" is another "lean-forward" community with lots of enthusiasts assembled from even smaller niche interests.

Building a show that will uniquely deliver value to a particular affinity community almost guarantees a passionate audience. That audience may not be large enough to satisfy the True Show Value (the cost of quality, value to the audience and advertising value formula ) but it creates that solid core who will work as your most vocal ambassadors. The user and brand value of niche video shows has always been about the level of engagement of the participants. Tomorrow I will talk about why we shouldn't call them "audiences" anymore as a passive viewing experience is not what the niche community will thrive on.

Identifying Niche Communities

Finding niche communities and identifying their members is relatively simple. We do it everyday with our Influencer Mapping for brands. Let's say your brand - Brand G -  makes some type of super energy efficient home appliance that is really designed to address current concerns about energy consumption, cost, and environmental impact. One niche community is the design and sustainability crew which includes all sorts of designers - product designers, graphic designers, architects, furniture designers (many designers are multidisciplinary). Many of them are concerned and focused on sustainability through design. Huge Ven diagram overlap. Brand G would focus on designing a show and the marketing behind it to appeal to the design and sustainability crew. Then they would broaden it - adjust the content slightly and expanded the marketing and outreach to grow the audience amongst design-concious consumers. As an avid, lifelong reader of Metropolis magazine, I guarantee this magazine which covers design and architecture and its impact is read by a ton of non-designers and non-architects.

Make a video show that they want and need. It might be a regular survey of new consumer products that satisfy our new green priorities. It may include interviews with designers, including audience members about their own experiences. It might be a episodic "How to Make Your Life More Green" with step-by-step instructions on transforming your life or household to reduce your carbon footprint, your costs, and more.

So, start with a core community and design your show around their needs. Then expand the focus to include the next ring of participants. You won't go so far as to dilute the show's value for the core and you will expand beyond a too narrow group fo participants.     

Next: Work the "Ladder of Engagement"

How to Create the Next Video on the Web: 4 Priorities for Brands

I love video on the web. The part I like best is not watching "Dollhouse" on every platform under the sun from Fox to Hulu to iPhone (actually, I don't know if you can watch it on the iPhone or not). I like the diversity of the programming coming from young entrepeneurs like Zadi Diaz, new net networks like Revison3, blip.tv and Next New Networks, more personal efforts from tradiitonal "stars" like Will Farrell. Brands have a great opportunity to connect and engage via video on the Web either through partnering with content programmers - like TerraTV on blip.tv -  or becoming their own programmers. Either way, we need to adopt a new discipline to be successful with video going forward.

I just met with a group of tremendously creative show "creators" in LA who will launch a program online over the next few months. They have all been enmeshed in the entertainment business and they know where the business has been and suspect where it is going.  I love their passion, their show concept, and their smartness about making the business side work. I have a lot of heart for their project. Still , succeeding is complicated.

While there are some breakout successes like Seth MacFarlane's channel, most video shows on the Web follow the reverse hockey stick approach where the highly promoted first episode draws a big crowd followed by depressing fall off in episodes 2,3,4. This freefall leaves many programs struggling in the long, long tail. Video production has a threshold level of effort and cost that it cannot routinely dip below. We all want "quality." And while we may be willing to accept Flipcam video interviews and an occaissional clever video thrown together in the backyard by two brothers and a dog, we generally want quality represented by the thinking, creativity, and even production value of the show.

True Show Value

Challenge is that the cost of quality, value to the audience and advertising value formula has not really been cracked yet or cracked consistently enough to spell out a path to success.That is the True Show Value and every producer should know their formula before trying the sell their program.  This is broader than TubeMogul's formula for success which focuses mainly on the creation and distribution of the video and the metadata associated with it. These things are important and I presume most video producers online get this. Too many programs either struggle to build an appreciable audience (size + composition) or to define the value to the advertiser. "Sponsoring" a show that may reach 10,000 uniques of which you know so little about may not translate into a perceived value to the advertiser. I am choosing my words carefully because I believe marketing integration with great content provides great value, I just don't think everyone is great at demonstrating that value.

Many brands want to suceed by reaching their customers or their influencers via video. Brands are learning that they can succeed by becoming content creators and building relationships via that content. Consumer marketers want to create their own episodics that draw moms in for 6-12 epsiodes. B2B marketers want to build a long term relationship with buyers and opinion-formers of their services. How can brands succeed where dedicated video entrepeneurs themselves struggle?

Four Strategic Priorities

There are four strategic priorities that will help. each day this week, I will drill down into one of the four. They represent the disciplined thinking that we need in this next chapter of video on the Web. I believe niche, special interest shows will flourish and I believe brands will reap great value from being a part of or even outright creating their own shows that consumers will increasingly spend time with. One of the keys may be in letting the crowd within a commlunity tell us what they want in terms of programming. Stay tuned as I drill down into each as the week unfolds:

• Focus on the Value to Niche, Affinity Communities

• Work the "Ladder of Engagement"
• Idea Bar #12: Threadless Meets Next New Networks
• Design Creative Marketing Models

An OfficeMax Social Media Lesson

I am not a big fan of quirky game or activity microsites that brands put together as an alternative to advertising. Too many advertising-driven marketers turn to this form of 'branded entertainment' first as it seems like a natural extension of the stroy-telling capacity fo their ad agencies of advertising leadership. Traffic to microsites feels as good as ad impressions, etc.. But they can play an important role and be hugely popular which can be helpful to the brand.

OfficeMax's Elf Yourself is hugely popular. They have done it for three years running. I laughed my you-know-what off when I saw Christine Cea and her band of marcom execs from Unilever "Elf" themselves at our WOMM workshop in December. (This past year's effort was powered by JibJab - check out Random Culture's coverage) By December 13th 2008, AdRants reported these figures:

• ElfYourself.com has served over 65 million visitors thus far
• Over 41 million elves have been made since mid-November*
• 35 new elves are created per second
• The average time people spend on Elf Yourself is equivalent to 800 years (based on total site visits times average time per visit)

In this past week's Business Week, Bob Thacker, SVP of marcom at OfficeMax, talked about competing with Staples and teh like when their ad budgets outweigh his measly $15m (that's just their newspaper spend). And while the holiday time is a high revenue time for them, the ad clutter out there is dense and immovable. So, did he charge his agency with creating the cut and paste cut-up, Elf Yourself? No. 

Experiment Broadly and Concurrently

He asked his team to create 20 different, holiday-themed microsites. many fell by the way-side. Elf Yourself took-off. that experimental approach is key to suceeding today. The days of researching adn "cathedral-building" a campaign must die. No one, no expert of any kind, knows exactly what will work especially when it comes to this narrow world of "viral campaigns.' The best professional advice is to poise yourself for experiments and be ready to dial up the effective ones. And time, 'she's-a-wastin.' Do a few things at once or in a short period of time. No one has the stamina for 6 months of testing what might work.

This is a big shift. Many ad agencies have either a creative or planner-dominated culture. Both can be 'cathedral-builders.' And the best of them are great salespeople on the brand value of cathedral building. They can really suck you in.  

Stay nimble. Try things. Be willing to be imperfect. Measure everyday. Make a change up when something doesn't work (and know when you need to commit more energy and effort to prove out the model, too). That's what I have learned form this example and many others.

The Next Experiment

Now that Officemax has a perennial winner with Elf Yourself, will they continue to apply the experimental approach to find the next marcom approach that works? Will they dive into utility in addition to entertainment?

(thanks to xcaballe on FlickR for the EflYourself CC image)

Davos 09 - Where's the Digital Experience?

I realized that the World Economic Forum Davos conference was happening this past week when I read Michael Arrington's "spit post" last week. All week, I had been meaning to ap into the social media side of the event yet just didn't have time. Like last year, I was able to tap into their "Social Media" page and choose between their YouTube pages, their Twitter feed, Netvibes, Flickr, Qik, Mogulus, MySpace, Facebook page, their own video player page and more.

Need to Add "Guides"

With all of this availble content, I need a guide. I want to find all the content related to digital innovation. Could be a series of human guides that offer their 'playlist' of content. Could be a series of segmented tags that the crowd attending and creating content would use. Where's the Davos Delicious page? (I would have guessed "davos2009" as a good, all-purpose tag but there are only 12 tags there). Clearly there is a lot of traditoinal media coverage from FT.com and Time.com. I particularly like the page and coverage from the Huffington post. They serve as guides for the readers who have a close affinity for their editorial focus.  I am particularly interested in sessions and discussions about the impact and trends of "digital."

I am confident that I could piece this together and create a "guide" to digital-related issues/sessions/content. Since the WEC has done such a great job with getting digital content up there, the next step could be creating these effective "guides" - tools, people, data - that makes teh experience more naigable and relevant to more people.

Good Digital Session: The Next Digital Experience

Here is a decent session hosted by Michael Arrington with some of the usual "young founders" talking at first about mobile and then wandering around the innovations brought about by YouTube, Facebook, and, finally issues like privacy. Participants: Hamid Akhavan, Eric K. Clemons, Chad Hurley, Craig Mundie, Shantanu Narayen, Mark Zuckerberg. The session runs like a standard panel - they don't dip into questions from online, Twitter, et al. Good stuff in there and worth having on in the background.

tidbits:

Mark Zuckerberg - "People are becoming more and more comfortable sharing more..."

Eric K. Clemons (Wharton) - "My good friend, Jason Lanier, who pioneered virtual reality says that is so "last year." What we want is augmented reality..." where we get more information layered in on our lives.

Eric K. Clemons - "...Us, old guys, we  are not hiding from data we are hiding from push...which is a big problem for (marketers)..."

Three Social Media Updates from the Inauguration

Been on Twitter all morning with millions of others following along with the inaguration via the hashtag #inaug09. A great way to be involved. Meanwhile I wanted to post an update regarding three interesting digital & social media experiences:

1. Check out Wordle.net's view of the President's Inauguration speech (first time I wrote, "the President" meaning President Obama). Great visual way to form a text cloud.

2. Check out the new Whitehouse Web site. It just launched complete with a blog, a Contact Us page and a call to "participate" from the Office of Public Liason. A great bridge between "brand Obama" as expressed in the campaign and, later, Change.gov, and the official Presidency. 

3. Check out CNN's "the Moment" in a day or so. Using Microsoft's Photosynth and everyone's pictures snapped at 12:00 PM (or whenever the new presdient actually took oath), CNN will stitch together a crowdsourced photo experience. This takes the "Day in the LIfe..." photo projects to a new level.