Andrew Douglas B2B journalist, turned PR man, specializing in new media.

I lived through a social media car crash

I lived through a social media car crash yesterday... and it has me jazzed.

My wife Anne (twitter.com/AnneDouglasComm) and I were presenting about social media at a conference for lawncare professionals and golf course superintendents yesterday afternoon. There were a lot of questions about Twitter so I fired up Tweetdeck on my Mac, which was projected on to a huge screen behind us. I wanted to show how you can see the most-discussed topics on Twitter in real-time.

At around 2:30 p.m., Gordon Lightfoot's name was huge on the cloud. He's a Canadian icon in the folk/rock world. I clicked on his name and saw a tweet that he'd died. With the whole audience watching, I clicked the URL that someone had posted and was directed to the National Post, a national newspaper in Canada, which was reporting that he died.

I turned to the audience and said something like, "you can't always trust what you read on Twitter but if the mainstream media confirms something, you know it's true."

HA!

Minutes later, a seminar attendee with a laptop piped up, "he's not dead!" People madly clicked around on their laptops and BlackBerry's. It turns out he can still wiggle his toes. The National Post bit on a wild rumour, possibly started after a media interview with old-time rocker Ronnie Hawkins.

A few things:

1. What a blow to the National Post brand. Twitter is buzzing and won't let the newspaper forget that it contributed to the story, even though it has taken it's original piece down off the website and is pretending it wasn't leading the "Lightfoot is Dead!" charge.
2. This shows the lightning-fast ability of Twitter and social media to wrestle with rumours and news and determine fact or fiction. It's the ultimate in crowd sourcing where you can have a swarm of people attack a piece of information and rip it apart and spread the truth.
3. Some are saying the Post should have left its original story up with a big mea culpa. I'm not so sure but I think they should have kept their part of the story in subsequent posts.
4. It was old-school journalism that cracked this open -- someone picked up a phone and called Lightfoot's publicist.

I couldn't have asked for a better real-time case study in the opportunities and challenges with social media. Thank you Gordon Lightfoot!

Windows Phone 7 Series – first impressions

First off, I had to basically cut and paste the name of Microsoft's new phone into the headline above to get it right. As the WSJ says, it sounds like the product of a typical Microsoft name-by-committee brainstorming.

Secondly, I need to be honest. I don't trust Microsoft. Being the overwhelming market share leader in PC software has allowed them to release inferior products. I can just see this phone saving its most horrific crashes for my most important phone calls.

That said, this new smarthphone OS looks interesting. I like how they've grouped applications into something like folders. The "desktop" space on my wife's iPhone or my son's iTouch is very busy. It's hard to find what you're looking for in the mess of applications. This OS looks more organized.

Other cool ideas:

• Every phone must have an FM radio and four points of touch on the screen
• There will be a special Bing (search) button which will allow one-touch access to one of the more common tasks, not to mention the fact that it will instantly boost the number of Bing users
• Real-time updates from Facebook, email, voicemail and, one would think, Twitter
• Most recent contacts stay at the top of the list
• Nice redesign of the typical user interface. I like the big, blocky type. It also looks like they've grouped like-applications.
• The People Hub where all my friends' feeds, from Facebook, Twitter, etc., will be grouped in one place

The wild card is the hardware. Microsoft says they're going to be careful which suppliers install Windows Phone 7 on which hardware. We'll have to wait and see.

iPad 2.0 – A reader comments

A smart reader, who prefers to remain anonymous, sent me an email after last night's post. Trust me, this guy is at the leading edge of new media marketing.

Nice blog. Well done. The more I learn about the Apple plan, the more I’ve come to understand that the devices are designed to do one thing – put a toll booth on the web.

There are experts out there that praise the Apple strategy and suggest all others will have to fall in line or get blown away. It does appear Apple has learned the downside to trying to be proprietary and keep user fees/their per-user revenue high – they now see the opposite as the way to go – get the devices out there, open the app and programming opps, make it cheap and easy for partners and the masses to jump onboard and micro-monetize out the ying-yang.

MP3 players and files were around long before iPod, but the device and software monetized it big time. Iphone inadvertantly discovered the micro-payment model via the world of apps (Apple thought they would own all of the app development and sales, but hit a bonanza when they opened it up). Now the iPad – it won’t do all that we were expecting, but I think it will monetize book, movie, tv and video consumption in a way the desktop, iPhone, iPod could not achieve. Do I have this right  - it seems so obvious.

Dear Steve: Here’s what I want in the iPad 2.0

I'm a Mac. I've been one for years. Between us, my family of five has three iPods, an iPod Touch, an iPhone, a MacBook, MacBook Pro, and two iMacs.

But we won't be buying an iPad. Why would we want a giant iPod Touch, which is all the iPad seems to be?

Steve Jobs and Apple missed an opportunity to invent a whole new category -- to take a bunch of my family's must-have tech appliances and smush them into one über tool.

Here are three ideas the bright minds at Apple can wrestle with before they release iPad 2.0.

1. A jot-and-jog deskmate

When an impromptu meeting gets called, I frequently grab a pad of paper in case I need to jot something down and my BlackBerry in case I need to check through old emails to jog my memory. Neither tool serves its purpose well. I lose the paper and my BB is an imperfect device. I have my emails sorted into folders on my laptop and I find it frustrating not being able to access my filing system without carting around my laptop. But it feels like overkill to unplug my MacBook Pro from my second screen and lug it into my boss' office for a five minute briefing.

It would be cool if I had an iPad that would sync automatically with my MacBook Pro via Bluetooth. My main files and email would be twinned just by setting it down on my desk near my laptop. I'd simply swipe my iPad off my desk and have a handy security blanket. The smaller screen and lack of keyboard would make it impractical as a regular work device but for meetings it could be dandy. Of course I'd need full versions of Word and Entourage. Don't give me cloud computing either -- I want loaded, fast software.

1. Solve my multiple phone problem

My wife and I are much more reachable on our mobiles. Nothing is more frustrating than grabbing our antiquated land-line phone and hearing the beep-beep-beep of voice mail and realizing people have been waiting for days for a call-back.

But I'm not ready to give up our land line yet. I want a home phone that is a multipurpose machine.Our kids are too young to have mobile phones and I still feel like we need a central, family number.

It seems like the iPad could somehow solve this problem. I could see myself carrying it around the house anyway, since it's loaded with apps that I'd want to plug into frequently.

The next generation iPad could have a wifi phone capability. When my wife's iPhone logs on to the same wifi network, it could transfer her calls to the iPad automatically. Same with my BlackBerry. It could forward the calls from my mobile number to our home number so we wouldn't chew up cell phone minutes.

I see holes in my idea already but I bet a day-long brainstorming session between some smart Apple designers could spit out some wild ideas that could change voice communication in the home forever.

3. One-handed QWERTY keyboard

In one promotional picture from Apple, I saw a guy holding an iPad with his left hand while he typed on a QWERTY keyboard with his right. It seemed awkward.

Apple should invent a one-handed QWERTY keyboard. I'd make it a circle, like an old rotary phone. Maybe they could put the most-used letters at the top, outer edge and less-used letters in the inside of the circle or at the bottom. It would take up less screen real estate and would probably be faster for typing. You could toggle between the new one-handed keyboard and a standard QWERTY one.

I was waiting for something big out of Steve Jobs. I remember the gasps and cheers when Jobs unlocked the iPhone for the first time. There was no reason to gasp at the new iPad. But there's always 2.0.

Twitter “Contributors” could bridge personality gap for business

I've been cooling on Twitter recently. Maybe it's because the monstrous amount of work I've been trying to beat back with a stick has kept me pretty focused on being billable.

Nonetheless, I still see the marketing value of Twitter. It helps clients engage with customers and it provides a channel in which to promote content.

But many businesses can't get their minds wrapped around how to fit Twitter into a corporate straight-jacket for three reasons:

1. Who's got enough time in their day to take on the task of tweeting enough to maintain credibility and to develop a following?
2. Does the corporation want individual employees developing a following of their own on Twitter -- only to take those eyeballs with them should they leave?
3. How can a Twitter experiment succeed without letting the person tweeting develop some personality? [see my previous post: B2B’s big hurdle: Developing a personality in social media]  It's tough to get someone to follow some lame Twitter feed where all they do is post links to dry-as-toast news releases.

Twitter might have come up with an answer. Twitter Contributors will flag which individual contributes a tweet to a corporate Twitter feed. It looks like it will be offered in a premium business package but I think it will be worth the investment.

This seems like an elegant way to answer some of the concerns businesses have about handing off the Twitter reins to staff. They could have a number of employees -- say a bunch of sales reps from a specific region -- contributing to one Twitter feed.

Say the feed is www.twitter.com/AcmeSouthwest. Each tweet from Bill the sales rep from the southwest region will have his name attached. Same with another rep from the region, Mary.

Followers would get the benefit of hearing a variety of voices and perspectives. Employees who are motivated to tweet could carry more of the Twitter load -- and see more of the upside. And employees would be able to develop some personality in a more controlled environment.

Stay tuned. Twitter Contributors hasn't been rolled out yet but it's coming soon.

I have seen the future… and it looks a lot like the web?

Time Warner has unveiled it's prototype e-reader. It looks kind of like Amazon's Kindle, except more web-like. Users can poke around pages to activate video, sort pictures, create their own table of contents, and other neat stuff.

I suppose it's cool but man, it looks demanding on the reader. I might be old school but when it comes to magazines, I'm happy to place my valuable reading time in the hands of a good editor. I prefer letting them sort through all the week's news and choose the best tidbits for me to know. I have plenty of opportunity elsewhere in my life to pick and choose exactly which fruit I want to eat. When I buy a magazine, I like coming to a table with food prepared and the table set, ready for me to tuck in.

I wonder if I had one of these fancy tablets from Time Warner if I'd spend most of my time poking and proding the darn thing instead of reading. When I want a web experience, I'll fire up the web.

This is very un-techie of me to say but sometimes the best tools are ones that have limited capabilities. Take my three-year-old iPod Nano. By and large, Apple resisted the temptation to pimp it up with too many bells and whistles. I know you can get an iPod Touch with plenty of extras built in but for my purposes, which is mainly listening to podcasts during my walk home, the iPod Nano is perfect.

Magazines are simple. Sometimes simplicity is good.

B2B’s big hurdle: Developing a personality in social media

Know what doesn't work in social media? Twitter or blog posts by nameless corporations. And that's going to be the biggest hurdle for people like me who do B2B public relations.

Andy Kleinschmidt

The rules of successful social media engagement -- frequent updates, transparency, engagement with other users, personality -- don't mesh with corporate PR 1.0. Old-school PR is about futzing over news releases and trying to micromanage how every word in each key message is written and repeated. It's often about playing defense.

It's hard to enter into a rapid-fire, engaging conversation when you've got to steer every phrase through five levels of approvals.

Compare that to my favourite people on Twitter. They give me small glimpses into their personal lives. I don't want to know what breakfast cereal they ate but I do want to trust the individuals who feed me my news and to trust someone I need to know a little about them.

I've taken a short clip of an interview I did with Andy Kleinschmidt, an extension educator at Ohio State University Extension based in Van Wert County, Ohio. Kleinschmidt is right into social media. He's on Twitter, he blogs and he's on Facebook.

"People would like to connect not only with some good information but with an expert that they trust, someone they can put a face too," he says. "I have a picture on my blog but I think I have to go much more transparent, much more next level and really put myself out there in videos and that type of thing."

Interview with Andy Kleinschmidt (1:38)

Some organizations are starting to get it. Take the Ohio Farm Bureau. They have a corporate Twitter account but add the initials of the writer to tweets. And you can see a short bio of each person on their Twitter page (see picture below, right).

Don't think this doesn't apply to you if you're not in the agriculture industry. The same rules around social media apply everywhere.

Successful corporations will allow their front-line people to step out in social media. Sure there's risk but it's either that or become completely irrelevant.

Treat your career like a business

Social media has give you the keys -- and the responsibility -- to manage your career. Your future hinges on your ability to build your personal brand.

Check out this piece of wisdom from Seth Godin, author of Tribes, on his blog:

Everyone is a journalist, of course, but just a few do it for a living. Everyone is a freelancer, or, at the very least, always looking for the next gig. Everyone with a credit card can do the purchasing, they just expense it.

If the only reason you're only wearing one hat is because you've always only worn one hat, that's not a good reason.

The previous generation got their 30-year pin and retired with a pension. That's not the world we live in now. I don't know many people my age -- other than bureaucrats and teachers -- who believe they'll be with their current employer until they retire.

A neighbour of ours wears multiple hats. He has a steady paycheck but he's not resting on his laurels. Stuart Robertson is a freelance web designer and consultant, the web manager for the University of Guelph and a member of the faculty in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Guelph-Humber. He's not moonlighting either. He's upfront with his employer about his other gigs.

Social media tools like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, and open-source blogging software like Wordpress, give you the ability to market yourself. What would you have done 10 years ago? I guess you could have tried to get published and then move to the speaking circuit but that was a tough, long road. Now social media tools allow anyone to build their personal brand. You can start with an audience of one and build it from there.

Since we've started blogging and tweeting, my wife Anne Douglas and I have picked up a paying speaking engagement. We're feeling inspired to try recording video for our blogs and investing even more money to drive traffic to our sites.

Granted, we're communications professionals and justify our obsession with new media as a way to learn the ropes for our clients. But if you believe Valarie Willis, guest blogger on TomPeters.com, everyone is going to have to get their hands dirty:

Even people inside organizations today should view their work and career as if they owned them. How differently would we act if we approached our work with an entrepreneurial spirit? Would you go after new skills, would you promote yourself more, would you find new projects to associate yourself with?

Talent is still key, work doesn't get done without the right talent in place. Today, however, the way organizations obtain the talent they need is changing. Talent will be brought in for projects, short and long term, and then released, and the cycle will start all over again.

I've been a pure entrepreneur relying on our small business to pay the mortgage. At other times I've been a wage slave, happy to have someone else worry about making sure salaries get paid. If Willis is right, the future might be more like the former, with "talent" being brought in on a case-by-case basis... or not.

So saddle up, it's time to treat your treat career like a business.

Use Skype for better quotes. Countdown to A.K.

I'm interviewing a fellow ag geek tonight. I can't wait.

If I wasn't totally jazzed for this interview already, I got totally pumped after we hammered out the time for our call. This was his next question:

What is your preference: telephone, Skype, Google Talk?

Man, this guy is wired. And it meshes with a blog post I read this morning from my former colleague and reluctant geek, Lee Hart. I love his memories of communication on the farm back in the day.

I emailed back that I'd prefer Skype because I have an account setup already and, to tell you the truth, I hadn't heard of Google Talk.

I use Skype whenever I do an interview for a story or news release. I make the call through my computer, using a headset with a boom mic, and record the call on my Mac using $69 software called WireTap Studio.

Skype is easy to use. Just download the software from the website, create a user profile, and start calling. You can call another Skype user for free. There is a small charge to call a landline from Skype. It varies depending where you call but to make a call to a number in North America costs only 2 cents a minute.

If you're in journalism or public relations and want to start getting better quotes, use Skype and record the audio.

Andy Kleinschmidt

Now back to my interview. It's with Andy Kleinschmidt, an extension educator at Ohio State University Extension based in Van Wert County, Ohio. He's harvesting corn plots so we had to set the interview after 9 p.m.

He captured this piece of gold on Twitter the other day:

"YouTube is the new fact sheet."

More than anything I've heard over the past few months this quote captures the new communications opportunities. I'm more convinced than ever that we have to integrate audio and video in almost everything we do -- including boring fact sheets and manuals.

Kleinschmidt is right into social media. He's on Twitter, he blogs, and he's on Facebook. In a short email conversation he talked about "evergreen" websites and how they don't generate nearly as much ROI as social media. Bang on.

I sent him an email to get him thinking but I need your help to beef up my interview. Email questions for me to ask this geeked-up extension dude. I know he's on the cutting edge of business-to-business social media and that we can all learn a lot.

Here are my questions to get the ball rolling:

What type of farmer do you think you’re reaching or do producers who surf the web come from all demographics?

What tools have worked and which ones haven’t?

What posts generate the most feedback?

The interview is set for Nov 3 at 9 p.m. so email your questions early.

Web can’t make emotional connection for marketers

I had a chat with someone over the weekend who works for a major non-profit organization — one that spends a lot of money on marketing each year.

They use a number of marketing channels, including TV, print, web, celebrity endorsements and door-to-door sales. The best return on investment comes from door-to-door sales. They’re salary based, not commission, although the pavement pounders do have sales targets to keep them motivated. Celebrity endorsements come in a close second to door-to-door.

My friend said that the marketing department decided to cut a big chunk of their TV spend recently. That’s because the web numbers were so strong and they felt online could pick up the slack. Of course, it’s much easier to judge the returns from the web and much harder to pinpoint how much is generated by TV.

But when the TV spend fell, so did the web numbers. He felt that the web is excellent at converting people from “shoppers” into “buyers” but that it’s much harder to make an emotional connection with someone on the web. It looks like TV and the web were working hand in hand, with TV being the conduit to the web. Without TV driving people to the web site, revenue dried up.

But really, how viable is TV anyway? First off, the TV audience is so fragmented. Secondly, at least in my household, we never watch live TV anymore. We even wait 45 minutes before joining Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday nights. By the end of the third period we’ve usually caught up to live TV by skipping all the commercial breaks using our digital video recorder.

Life is getting complicated for marketers who wish to make an emotional connection between consumers and their brand. TV might not cut it anymore but the web and its small-screen platform that encourages people’s short attention span ain’t workin’ either. Where do you find a mass audience these days?

These are fascinating times.