Last is amazing. Last.fm I mean. For those not familiar, Last is a service that recommends and plays music, videos and concerts based on what you listen to.  So you type in “Huey Lewis and the News” and it plays 80s music similar to Huey Lewis songs. In theory anyway.  You can also scrobble (whatever that means , add private tags, add public tags, add and remove friends, create a public profile, message other users publicly, send shout-outs, view user-uploaded videos related to the songs your listening to,  etc. etc…

Pandora.com offers that same service minus all the bells and whistles. In fact the core service, playing songs related to the song or artist you’ve entered, is far more reliable than Last’s.  There have been many times when listening to last.fm that I wanted to listen to a specific song genre (80s pop, for instance) and the Last recommendations that played were not nearly as consistent as the recommendations that pandora played.

My point? In evaluating technology and IT services (whether it’s Radian6 vs. Sysomos or Salesforce.com vs. 37Signals Highrise CRM): Simpler is better. Bells and whistles oftentimes are good for making noise and not much else.

What’s your take? Do you find yourself keeping it simple when it comes to IT or do you prefer the most sophisticated option out there?  Do you struggle with having to forgo the capabilities that go along with more sophisticated technology?

Oh by the way, while pondering this, I highly recommend that you check out 37Signals’ book, Getting Real.

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Brown Bear having fun…

Originally uploaded by Beverly & Pack

Chris Brogan has written an interesting post today that I suggest you check out concerning google Wave which has really gotten me thinking:  Should I maybe give Wave a second look? And a second, more important question: Have Radian6, Sysomos, ScoutLabs, Jodange and other listening / monitoring platforms thought about how they will monitor the rapidly increasing number of public conversations taking place there?

I look forward to hearing how others, most especially the major Listening platforms are making sense of something I frankly have not figured out yet. Comment away!

And, yes, of course, feel free to wave me! I am hmackenjr -at- googlewave -dot- com.

By the way, if you have never seen Wave or don’t know much about it, there’s a good summary at Mark Smithers’ blog.

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When winning means everything

Originally uploaded by HikingArtist.com

Over the last several months I’ve spent a considerable amount of my time evaluating and testing various social media monitoring platforms for medium-sized and enterprise-class organizations. I’ve narrowed down my focus to three with an outstanding reputation in the industry. There are certainly others who have an excellent reputation as well but among paid platform providers these have stood out from the pack from the research I have done:

Radian6, ScoutLabs and Sysomos.

My conclusion: They are all winners in their own right. Numero uno truly is relative and depends on the context of your enterprise’s needs. But more on that in a sec.

So I’ve looked at lots of platforms but the three I am most impressed by and have looked at most closely thus far are Radian6 (which I’ve demo’d and tested), ScoutLabs (which I’ve also demo’d and tested) and Sysomos, which I’ve demo’d and plan to test early this coming week..

The question we at VMR and myself in particular have been asking continually is not so much which is the best platform, but which is the best platform (or combination of platforms) for us to service our clients and prospective clients and their specific needs.

When it comes to something as complex and sophisticated as social media monitoring / listening and engagement platforms, each of the three above have their strengths (more on that in a future post) but the bottom line is that the best option for your enterprise really depends on the context of your situation.

The answers to questions like the few (of many) that I have listed below, will hopefully help you engage in meaningful dialogue internally as well as externally with vendors and agency partners vis-à-vis your social media marketing, public relations, customer service, and sales efforts online:

1. Are you looking to compare your share of voice online versus that of your competitors and track that over time using easily comprehensible metrics that can be assigned a $ value?

2. Whose voice do you want to listen to? Key influeners? General consumer sentiment? Stakeholders? Traditional Media? Male? Female? In North America or worldwide?

3. Do you need a platform that can be used in focus group fashion to slice and dice general consumer sentiment, key influencer sentiment, and or journalist sentiment?

4. Do you need to know where the fish (your prospects and key influencers) are currently swimming (“conversing”) before you dive into or create an empty pond?

5. Would you like to track how well your PR campaigns have increased share of voice specifically among key influencers or among consumers at large?

6. What about your sales and customer services teams? Are they looking for the actionable
intelligence that a social media monitoring platform can provide? Will the monitoring platform you choose need to integrate well with a CRM like salesforce.com?

7. Which social media “venues” are you most interested in monitoring? Blogs? Traditional News Outlets? Forums? Linkedin? Facebook? Youtube? Blogtalkradio? Podcasts? (Check out the conversation prism below to get a better sense for what’s out there)

8. If influencing the influencers is important to you, do you need a platform that helps you identify key influencers by showing you inbound links, comment count, level of engagement?

9. Is yours a global brand where you need to monitor not only key influencer sentiment but also the so-called “Long Tail” of your marketing sales curve?

10. Is your CMO demanding specific and meaningful metrics that can demonstrate a clear ROI from your social media engagement efforts?

11. If you are monitoring global brands, will you need a platform that translates content and sentiment in multiple languages?

12. Do you have the resources, expertise and social media savvy currently to fully leverage the capabilities of whatever platform is best for you?

13. How much historical data will you need? Some platforms have absolutely enormous amounts of historical data. Is that going to be helpful to your PR and marketing teams? Or not worth paying extra for?

14. What about ease of use? Do you need a platform that multiple users in your organization will learn quickly and easily, thus increasing their level of online engagement?

There are many options and just as many needs-analysis questions out there for medium-sized and enterpise-class organizations when it comes to monitoring platforms and social media agencies.

While content may indeed be king (is it still?), when it comes to evaluating your options in the world of social media and understanding how to engage after listening carefully, context i is queen.

That’s how we are approaching our needs analysis at VMR for ourselves and for our prospective clients. I’d love to hear from the three leaders above, their competitors, their current clients and those that are taking a look at them. Now’s your chance to speak your mind and voice your choice.

Do you agree that there is no number 1?
What questions would you add to a needs analysis?
Which questions concerning social media and social media monitoring are most important for your organization to consider?
Which ones have you had the most difficulty answering?

Bring on the comments. I’ll be listening.

Putting the Public Back in Public Relations, co-authored by Brian Solis and Deirdre Breakenridge is a must read for any social media professional. So it should come as no surprise that Solis along with Jesse Thomas (JESS3) have come out with one of the most artistic representations of the world of social media to date. That’s quite a feat, considering the immense scope and variety of social media outlets online. It’s definitely worth checking out if you need a high level view of what exactly comprises “Social Media”

The Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas

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Well… News is important. We need good journalists with integrity to report the facts.

Sports… we love sports… but do you really need a J-School degree to provide great sports media content for your viewers.

What has the social media, web 2.0 movement taught us. If nothing else: people find themselves fascinating. Their own lives, their own friends, their own news. So why wouldn’t we expect the same from sports media?

The future of sports media is large, interactive, fan-based content sure to ultimately overwhelm the talking heads.

Vs.   Duke ,   

                                                                                                                                          2pm EST,  Alexander Memorial Coliseum, Atlanta, GA 

1 lucky Super GT Fan will be given broadcast control at tip-off!  Email BryanB1300@gmail.com for more details.

Are you a journalist? Are you familar with Computer Assisted Reporting? Do sometimes struggle to find sources for your stories? A little short on time? Have you ever wondered how you can make use of linkedin to help you write better stories and save valuable time?

Here are 10 links for some great pointers for journalists:

Sources from http://press.linkedin.com/understanding-linkedin

http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=best_practices_journalism

http://learn.linkedin.com/journalists/

http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2007/04/24/ten-ways-journalists-can-use-linkedin/

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=32&aid=102953

http://wordcountwriter.com/2008/11/06/reposting-the-secret-to-my-linkedin-success/

http://wordcountwriter.com/2007/12/07/how-writers-can-use-linkedin/

http://wordcountwriter.com/2009/05/18/new-ways-to-use-linkedin-to-find-story-sources/

http://wordcountwriter.com/2008/10/29/link-your-wordpress-six-apart-blog-to-your-linkedin-profile/

              Um, yeah- today’s um, blog is going to, um, be about, you know,.pacers, in speaking.   Certainly blog-worthy, but serious business as well, no?  If I had a pill to permanently eliminate ‘ums’, or ‘uhs,’ and all other unnecessary pacers from your speech, would you take it?  The pill would remove pacers from your speech and replace them with a well-timed and eloquent silence.  Do we have a deal yet?  It’s FDA approved with no negative side-effects.  Would you like to order a supply for your sales-team as well as yourself?  What about your children? How much does it cost, you ask?-Three dollars for a life-time supply, and if you buy today, I’ll throw in vial of magic water extracted from the Fountain of Youth. So, um, do we, uhh.. *clears throat* have a deal? *breaks eye contact abruptly, hands in pockets, weight on heels*.

              My pill-pushing in this scenario is facing an enormous credibility problem.  You’re definitely going to need some compelling testimonials before you believe this is a legitimate product.  And the fact that my speech (among other things) telegraphs a lack of confidence as I ask for the sale is certainly going to hurt my chances, right? But what if I’m not telegraphing a lack of confidence?  What if I just forgot my pill this morning and got nervous at the clutch moment, despite the fact that I believe strongly in my product?  Or, even better, what if I’m just trying to cleverly demonstrate the real-world ROI that purchasing this pill will deliver for you?  What if this is the proven tactic I’ve used to humorously cherry-top the deals I’ve made with countless satisfied customers.  

               Who knows why we ‘um’ and ‘uh’ and ‘ahem’  and stutter and stammer and mumble and mutter.  All we know is we don’t like it when we do.

                I particularly try to avoid letting pacers slip after I’ve said something that I’ve personally found to be insightful, or after I’ve jumped on an opportunity to tactfully work in a fancy word.  I hear others fall into this trap regularly.  “Social Media application for business, has to be inherently co-evolutional if it hopes  to keep-pace with technology’s equally inherent ephemeral  nature, um…”—I call this the ‘Um of Self-Idolization’ a personal congratulatory moment mistakenly  shared publically. Listen for it- you’ll catch it every day =)  –It’s not that I have a problem with myself or others devoting a half-second to self-marveling, but if you’re as much of a maniac as I am, you use the second half-second  to loathe yourself for succumbing to such ego-centric behavior and the third half-second to congratulate yourself, a little more modestly this time, on having the admirable humility and character to self-loathe where appropriate, and by the seventh or eighth half-second, you have re-established the… homeostasis of your discourse, and um,…… you can finally proceed as-planned with your conversation. 

              So we all hate and distrust our own ums and maybe we’re sub-consciously inclined to distrust the ums of others.  But don’t we also…sort of… distrust the smiling salesman in the expensive suit whose speech is velvety-smooth, whose manner seems impervious to all brands of psychological nuance? After all, we’re all just humans in the end, we like to laugh, we clearly enjoy reading blogs about total nonsense, and we can’t deny, at some level, we feel safer in the company of those who can share and empathize with all those pesky complexities we might unduly beat ourselves up over.  And not worrying so much about your ums and uhs is, after all, a proven, all-natural way to control them.

                So…  um, still wanna buy the pill?

            It’s a great year to be a Georgia Tech football fan.  We’re 10-1, ranked 7^th nationally, and headed to the Atlantic Coast Conference Championship Game in Tampa.  The latest news is that head coach Paul Johnson, the mastermind behind Tech’s 2^nd-in-the-nation rushing offense, has extended his contract.  Rumors were abound that Johnson would be a top candidate to replace the embattled Charlie Weiss at Notre Dame next year.   Tech fans were aware of the harsh reality, NotreDame, with their national fan base and lucrative NBC contracts, could out-bid Tech for Johnson’s services.

Sure, at its core, it’s just a game, but we can’t deny that football is a serious business.   If we attempt to classify football as a consumable product, we would most likely declare it an exceedingly popular form of entertainment.  But what separates sports from game shows or reality TV?  Why is there a unique sense of genuine and reverberating consequence attached to the outcome of a football match-up?  Why is it ok to stand up and yell, paint letters on your chest, emotionally agonize over defeat, and elate in victory?

The truth about the sports business is that its product offerings extend beyond entertainment.  Pride is also a product, the quality-control of which is profoundly important.  The careers of the industry’s professionals- the players, coaches, promoters, and owners- all hinge on the franchise’s ability to provide their customers with pride.

There is no deeper brand-bonding then that which takes place between the fan and the franchise.   The bond is powerful enough to make a Chicago Bear’s fan take off his shirt in sub-zero temperatures in the name of spirit.  Imagine what Proctor and Gamble or Starbucks Coffee could do if they were able to inspire a comparable depth of loyalty.  

UPS has come close.  Most people in this country have a strongly positive impression of this organization.  The character of this widespread public support, at times, approaches an emotional plane, a loyalty on the brink of fierceness. 

Interesting to note UPS invests in the sponsorship of a NASCAR racer- a promotion style which all but eliminates the association barrier between a sports contender and a non-sports brand.  No doubt, the fans of “The UPS Car” share in the ups and downs of the racing season.  They refer to the UPS team as “we”. They stand up and cheer when they pull off an upset.  They brag when they win dominantly and sulk away an entire afternoon after a tough loss. 

My personal confession is that I’ve been rocking my Georgia Tech shirts, hats, jacket, and sweatshirt just a little more often this season than in those prior.    I’m very pleased with their current product-line.

I found this fascinating quote today:

This is the last in our series on Social Media Time Management, but you’ll really find that these are less ideas about managing just social media and more ideas for managing online life in general. It’s a balancing act. And ultimately, you’re in the driver’s seat.altitudebranding.com, Social Media Time Management: 9 Guiding Principles, Oct 2009

You should read the whole article.

Author: K. MacKillop

Marketing a startup is one of the biggest struggles for any entrepreneur. You need to increase sales and grow your customer base, but effective advertising is expensive. While the internet provides significant opportunities for low-cost and no-cost marketing, many business owners overlook the value in establishing an in-house public relations Read the rest of this entry »