The Blogosphere According to Bloggers

I know I'm a little slow in reacting to the Technorati State of the Blogosphere report, but I kept coming back to something I couldn't quite shake. More on that in a minute. First, let's talk about a few of the interesting tidbits about brands and blogging.

"Whether or not a brand has launched a social media strategy, more likely than not, it’s already present in the Blogosphere. Four in five bloggers post brand or product reviews, with 37% posting them frequently. 90% of bloggers say they post about the brands, music, movies and books that they love (or hate)."



Yep, folks. People are talking about you, whether you like it or not. More importantly, people are looking for information online, and when they find it, they may not realize they're on a blog. It's just a link they clicked from their Google search.

Social media users tend to label our tools and put them in buckets - blogging, microblogging, crowdsourcing, whatever. But the people that FIND information on the web aren't classifying things the same way we are. They just want to know what people are saying about the laptop they're thinking of buying, or the hotel they're thinking of staying at. When they click on a link, it may not register with them that it's a blog or a forum post or a mainstream news article online, but it's the information they're after. But they ARE looking for it, so we ought to be putting it in places they can find it and - perhaps more importantly - interact and react to it.

"Company information or gossip and everyday retail experiences are fodder for the majority of bloggers."


Which means people want to talk about you, and given no other choice, will use the information they find to make judgments about your business. It's ever more important that you as the brand are contributing your voice and perspective to the conversation, and showing that other people's viewpoints matter to you, too.

But here's my word of caution. The report is decidedly slanted - Technorati (fittingly) only surveyed bloggers for this report. I understand that they're trying to take the pulse of THEIR community - the bloggers - and understand how and why they do what they do.

But if you're a consultant or company looking at this information, be careful not to overinflate some of the findings, and recognize that they're from a plugged-in audience. Of course they're going to predict the continued growth of blogs and the demise of print - that's the world they live in. Of course they're going to believe that blogs' influence will get ever greater in the grand communications highway - it's part of the sea change that they're creating.

I believe these things - I do. I work with lots of people to understand and tap the potential of marketing through social media - blogging included - and I think blogging is a powerful, accessible medium that really has changed the face of media. But the fishbowl can make you see things through curved glass.

So I'll end by saying that once again, we all need to be mindful of the individual business value of these tools, the important factors for consideration, and how they integrate into the larger landscape. Traditional methods of communication can still be very viable, and even more powerful when enhanced with carefully selected social media tools to transform a message into a dialogue.

And the conversation is only as good as the quality of its participants. More on that later this week...

Your Brand, In Plain English

I'm not a big fan of buzzwords. Why? They dilute brands more effectively than almost anything else. And I promise, these have all come from real corporate documents, though names have been withheld to protect the offenders.

The Compound Buzzword
This is what you get when you take a perfectly good normal word - like "organic" - and cram it into some business-related context because it sounds cool, often smashing it together with some other buzzword. Something like:

We create organic solution stacks to solve our clients' infrastructure issues.

You've now compounded the confusion by making up collections of words that independently may (or may not) mean something to your customer, but have lost all context.

The Noun-Into-A-Verb
Ever heard this one?

We've tasked our customer service team to meet your every need.

Beside the fact that this violates every grammar rule because it's just a made-up word, it sounds self-important. As if you're too good to just have customer service teams that are dedicated to meeting needs. They have to be "tasked" to do so. Ergh.

The Tech Upgrade
This practice uses technically-related terms and applies them to non-technical subjects.

Our mission statement outlines our read-only values: integrity, creativity, and collaboration.

In essence you're trying to say that those values can't or won't be compromised. So why not use a word designed for that purpose? Like, say, uncompromising?

The Mashup
It can be tempting to create a whole new word, hoping that someday, someone will know you coined that term. Most of the time, you just sound like you're trying too hard:

We keep our client meetings centergistic and focused on outcomes.

What do you think? Does this make you want to hire them, or does it make you wonder if their meetings will be equally difficult to interpret?

The Misnomer
Here we've got words that are either oxymorons - meaning that that by definition the two words are opposites - or words that are completely redundant and unnecessary. My favorite example of late:

We form collaborative partnerships to help you meet your goals.

I don't know about you, but I haven't met a partnership that wasn't - at least by the pure definition of "working together" - collaborative.

Ok, Amber....What's your point?
Ok. The above are kind of fun, and you may have gotten a chuckle out of it. (For even more laughs on the buzzword front, check out BuzzWhack.) But the truth is these kinds of offenses are rampant in the world of marketing, and even more so now in social media.

Everyone wants to be different, innovative, the first to the finish line. And in the process, we've left behind some very simple words to describe what we do.

A brand isn't about 20 point Scrabulous words (or Scrabble, for you analog folk). It's about clearly defining your brand in words that make it easy for your customers to explain it to someone else.

So next time you're writing copy for your website or putting together your pitch for a new client, skip the lingo, and don't try to be a hero. Use real words that real people use and understand, and they'll be much more likely to talk about you. If you have trouble explaining your brand in a sentence, you ought to spend some time distilling it down until you can.

Sometimes, simple really is better.

Is your social media consultant...social?

There was a great post on Mashable yesterday about ways to know when you should fire your social media consultant. I agree very much with the points Alex raised, but would also like to add a few of my own to the list.

They swim mostly in the fishbowl.
What I mean by this: some so-called social media gurus love to spend a lot of their time backslapping each other about how great they are. (Note to these folks: spending the bulk of your time pimping your blog on Twitter while not taking the time to engage on any of the comments on said blog does not qualify you as a social media "expert"). A good adviser of ANY kind needs to be taking in a strategic spectrum of expertise across industries and disciplines - of course with a focus on their area of expertise - in order to advise their clients in the most informed manner. You simply can't do that if you only spend time with your own "kind".

Jason Falls cautioned social media professionals yesterday about spending too much time in the bubble, and it's great advice. Make sure your consultant has offline expertise and the ability to understand the bigger business picture.

They tout social media as the only strategy.
I could probably retire if I had a penny for each time I had to explain that social media is NOT a replacement for sound corporate communication strategy overall. It is not a shortcut. It is but one piece of a larger picture, and it is not necessarily the right approach for every company. Yes, community and relationships are valuable no matter what the industry, and I believe companies should strive to build lasting relationships with their customers. But social media requires an investment of time and resources, and not all the tools are suited to any given company.

If your consultant is insisting that creating a page on Facebook or an account on Twitter is the answer to all your marketing problems, don't walk away. RUN.

They don't practice what they preach.
This is a biggie with me. Is your consultant building a relationship with YOU? Do they respond to emails, engage readers on their blog, seem like a community is something they enjoy being a part of? Ask them why they do what they do. Talk to passionate and dedicated people like Mack Collier, Jason Falls, Connie Reece, Liz Strauss, or Geoff Livingston, and see how much the conversation truly matters to them. They're shining examples of what it means to walk the walk, and I learn from all of them, every day.

I can't speak for everyone else, but social media is a passion for me because I believe that relationships are the cornerstone of truly great businesses. How those relationships are cultivated is different for everyone, but you have to love the philosophy in order to apply it well. Social media is a powerful and dynamic set of tools, but the underlying premise of building stronger and more fruitful communities should be the undercurrent of why you're using them.

Marketing, Social Media and Web...oh my!

After some discussion and sharing on Twitter, I pulled together this list of some of the upcoming conferences and events for those wanting to expand their horizons in marketing and social media (and a little Web 2.0 thrown in for good measure). This list is by no means exhaustive; if you know of a great event that marketing folks should know about, please include it in the comments with a link.

TechnoMarketing - Oct 6-7, 2008, Chicago and Oct 20-21, Newport Beach

Corporate Communications in a Web 2.0 World - Oct 14-16, 2008, Cary, NC

New Marketing Summit - Oct 14-15, 2008 - Foxboro, MA (2009 dates too)

MarketingProfs DMM - Oct 22-23, 2008, Scottsdale, AZ

PRSA International - Oct 25-28, 2008, Detroit

BlogWell - October 28, 2008, San Jose, CA

Forrester's Consumer Forum - Oct 28-29, Dallas, TX

SWOMFest - October 30, 2008, Austin, TX

Ad:Tech New York - November 3-6, 2008, NYC (int'l dates year round)

PubCon Search Marketing Conference - Nov 11-14, Las Vegas

AdAge 360 Marketing Conference - Nov 12, 2008, NYC

WOM Crash Courses - Nov 6, Dec 10, and Jan 21 in Chicago

SES Chicago (dates and locations worldwide) - December 8-12, Chicago

Affiliate Summit - Jan 11-13, 2009 in Las Vegas

SXSW Interactive - March 13-17, 2009, Austin, TX

Web 2.0 Expo - March 31 - April 3, 2009, San Francisco

SBMU - TBD in April 2009, Houston, TX

SOBCon - May 1-3, 2009, Chicago

SMX (Search Marketing Expo) - International Dates

If you missed these events from last month, be sure and watch their sites to catch them in 2009:

BlogWorld Expo - September

Interact - September

Inbound Marketing Summit

Gnomedex

TechCrunch 50

BlogHer

If big formal conferences aren't your thing, check out these unconferences that are happening all the time, maybe in your area (or host your own):

PodCamp

BarCamp

A Penny for Your Brilliance.

"Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think." Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882)

Everyone has something to give. And knowledge is a powerful currency.

I spent the last several days at the Small Business Marketing Unleashed conference put on by the amazing (did I mention amazing?) folks at Search Engine Guide. I absolutely love that this event is limited in scale to about 100 people. At that size, you can actually meet and interact with people at a level you just can't do at a Big Business Expo.

A powerful theme emerged on day one, and continued throughout the next several days. And it has huge relevance in the business world.

Left and right, people were giving away their knowledge.

Yes, we paid to go to the conference, but as conferences go, even that was a modest investment. But it wasn't just the sessions where information and knowledge was being shared. It was in the hallways. At the lunch table. On the walk from the conference center to the hotel. Over dinner, drinks, even poolside.

People of all stripes - web marketing, search, social media, branding, marketing, business owners, lawyers, technology folk, social media monitoring, video and podcasting - were all too happy to spend time with one another learning, asking questions, sharing, lending a few words of knowledge or experience. And what happens? Everyone benefits.

It's the have-a-penny-leave-a-penny philosophy of business. You're an expert at something, so leave some knowledge for someone else who needs it. And in return, someone is bound to come along to replace that knowledge with something you needed too.

When you're marketing your business, via traditional or social means, contributing your expertise is one of the most valuable things you can do. An e-book. A white paper. An educational video. Or 30 minutes of your time spent with someone to impart a bit of your vast knowledge. Some friendly advice or insight to a new business owner.

Now, before someone freaks out on me for advocating giving away the "secret sauce", that's not what I'm suggesting. But pieces of it? You bet. No one is going to be able to replicate or replace your business by using your PowerPoint slides. But by teaching and sharing, you are cultivating a sense of ownership and learning in others.

I learned so much from my friends this weekend. I have come away richer for the experience, and hopefully left a little something in the penny jar for someone else. Thank you to you all for your intellectual philanthropy, and making it fun in the meantime.

If you aren't out there sharing what you know with someone who can benefit from just a handful of your expertise, please go pick up the phone or send an email. Right now. I'll be here when you get back, counting my pennies.

image by r-z