PR 2.0: July 2008

Thursday, July 31, 2008

SEC To Recognize Corporate Blogs as Public Disclosure, What This Means for Wires and Press Releases

Note: This post originally ran on TechCrunch, "SEC To Recognize Corporate Blogs as Public Disclosure. Can We Now Kill the Press Release?"

Here's the director's cut, "SEC To Recognize Corporate Blogs as Public Disclosure, What This Means for Wires and Press Releases"



For several years, Sun CEO, Jonathan Schwartz has lobbied the SEC to allow disclosure of financial information through corporate blogs. In a landmark announcement, it seems that Mr. Schwartz may indeed get his wish, and with it, a historical decision that could break the age-old shackles that bound businesses to traditional media and distribution channels in order to satisfy full disclosure.

The SEC has announced that it will recognize corporate Web sites and blogs as channels for satisfying the full disclosure required by Regulation FD (Fair Disclosure).

According to the SEC announcement, "UNDER certain circumstances, companies can rely on their websites and blogs to meet the public disclosure requirements under Regulation FD (Fair Disclosure), according to new guidance unanimously approved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission today."

Chairman Christopher Cox opened up the discussion by recognizing that the Web has matured providing a big step forward for investors, "Ongoing technological advances in electronic communications have increased both the market’s and investors’ demand for more timely company disclosure and the ability for companies to capture, process and disseminate this information to market participants."

The SEC documents boundaries for sharing information as well as holding companies and their employees liable for the information that they post on blogs and discussion forums.

Disclosure is an Expensive Business

Naturally, this is at the very least, represents a potential harbinger for each of the popular wire services.

A significant percentage of their lifeblood is tied to market-relevant or earnings content that, until now, required wire services, and cost hundreds of dollars (in some cases over $1,000) per announcement in order to satisfy disclosure. For many companies, a fixed budget for disclosure absorbed the critical resources necessary to support the activity of sharing news and therefore relied upon wires to do their public and investor relations on their behalf.

But as many PR and IR professionals will concede, issuing releases on the wire is merely an expensive step in a process of creating and distributing news using traditional tools. If you represent a publicly traded company that is actively monitored by market influencers, it's very likely that your press release will reach their systems via the wire.

These days, it's almost certain that a reporter or analyst will, in the best case, see and file the release but most often, the very people we hope will find and in turn, report on the information discovered, will honestly never know that you released news at all unless they're proactively contacted. Any good public relations or investor relations professional will ensure that their top financial and business contacts are alerted to upcoming news, with or without giving away the news, in advance - depending on their interpretation of Reg FD and the trust level of their relationships.

There is no substitute for the real world relationships we forge in order to bridge the right content specifically for the right people.

Do these new guidelines offer companies the ability to shift some or all of its wire budget back into the critical role of outbound support for corporate news?

Disclosure Versus IR/PR

Disclosure relates to the market - the people who trade or may act based on the information you publish. Reg FD protects the voice and pocketbook of the investor and guides companies on how to publish information so that it reaches a fair share of the market so that no one person has access to information before the other.

We can't deny or ignore the value and benefits associated with strategic support for connecting corporate news to market influencers. Now, to the defense of wire services, and as I've written before, wire services can bypass those very influencers to reach people directly.

Not only does wire distribution meet disclosure, the art of search engine optimized press releases (SEO releases) have the unique ability to appear in search engines tied to the key words your market uses to search for related and relevant information. PR Newswire, MarketWire, Business Wire, and PRWeb offer businesses the ability to distribute news with added SEO functionality. When paired with a well-written, SEO optimized press release, wire distribution can more than satisfy disclosure, it can carry your story directly to the people looking for it.

In addition, wire services have invested over the years in the development of a secondary distribution channel that has, in my opinion, remained relevant even as the Web continues to rapidly change and evolve.

When a press release crosses a wire, many search engines and their financial properties (finance.yahoo.com or finance.google.com) and all market-powered hubs, portals and dashboards, receive wire feeds which automatically populate respective "Recent News" sections. Similar to how we subscribe to RSS feeds to seamlessly receive the news and information we prefer, investors, analysts, press, and decision makers can see, in one place, the trading status, coverage, related news, and crowd-powered discussions around the activity. This has been the case since the days of Web 1.0 and was our first taste of the finance and the Social Web as we know it today.

Without wire services, penetrating these valuable dashboards, that are still today, a primary source of financial information and activity, is incredibly difficult, if not impossible.

This new guidance, however, presents an opportunity to connect corporate information from sites and blogs to these powerful financial online hubs so that important corporate news can still reach people, the way they're used to receiving it.

Forcing them to change their habits isn't a realistic expectation in the short-term.

Regulation FD and Social Media

The SEC is taking the right steps to embrace the new tools and services that reach people in addition to wire services. With the recognition of blogs as a viable form of disclosure, under certain circumstances of course, the SEC is officially recognizing Social Media and in a sense, socializing the rules associated with Reg FD.

Perhaps, the most significant change stemming from the new SEC guidance is that Web-based disclosure does not have to appear in a format comparable to paper-based information, unless the Commission's rules explicitly require it.

This announcement finally opens the door for the Social Media Release aka a media-rich blog posts that package news with social objects in a shareable and conversational format. We're not talking about about opening the door for using a new tool to pump out the same old hype or BS.

For a few years, Todd Defren, Chris Heuer, Shannon Whitley, Shel Holtz and I, along with the rest of the Social Media Release WorkGroup, not only defended and defined the opportunity for Social Media Releases (SMRs), but also fielded emotionally-charged questions from the financial and IR communities asking about whether or not an SMR would ever meet disclosure requirements for Reg FD, and without it, what good would it ever be...

While there have been many discussions and debates to whether a Social Media Release should cross the wire and if so, what format and design it should resemble, my belief is that SMRs should always reside on dedicated blog platforms (WordPress, MoveableType) as part of a Social Media Newsroom. And, Social Media Releases should only complement a traditional press release and disclosure activity and not replace it.

Originally introduced by Todd Defren in response to Tom Foremski’s call for the death of press releases, the SMR represents a new socially-rooted format that complements traditional and SEO press releases by combining news facts and social assets in one, easy to digest, and repurpose, tool.

Giving everyone what they need and how they need it, requires a different approach. Almost every press release issued today is done so without video or audio, and many still do not include links to additional information or supporting content.

While these multimedia pieces are underlying components of SMRs, there's more to the presentation than multimedia content. The value of aggregating Social Media in one digital release connects information and content across social networks with the people looking for it, as well as the conversations that bind them together.

And not only do SMRs socialize content and link conversations across the Social Web, they also help bloggers and online journalists more effectively write a rich media post using one resource that provides them with everything they need.Now that we don't need to adhere to a fixed form or design and presentation aesthetics, technically there's holding us back from carrying the torch forward. It can only help present and share information in an alternative method that complements traditional releases, outbound contact, and market-related conference calls.

Coming back to my belief that Social Media Releases should be hosted on blogs (because they really are a combination of a blog post and a great press release) and not cross wires, with the new rules for Reg FD, an SMR by default, could now meet disclosure - assuming that the host site is recognized as meeting the disclosure standards.

Social Media Releases offer the ability to not only share relevant financial data, but also feature social content that reinforces that data and the overall company story.

We've discussed how information can reach the market, investors, peers, and customers through search as well through articles and blog posts and also via financial portals. Search engines are manipulated by SEO (search engine optimization). Social Media is powered by SMO (social media optimization) and the results are different in how, when, and where they appear. In most cases, SEO doesn't affect the outcome of content within social networks. But, dedicated tagging, key words, and crowdsourced participation drive the "discoverability" of content in the Social Web.

Picture a blog post that announced corporate data (not unlike a standard financial press release) but now, along with a custom video hosted from YouTube, supporting graphs and exec images funneled from flickr, pre-recorded audio podcasts/conferences piped in from iTunes, packaged market data sourced from Docstoc, related company and landscape stories and public commentary linked from Delicious. Content can also push to micromedia services such as Twitter, Identi.ca and FriendFeed to contribute to the company's brandstream. In a sense, the Social Media Release, hosted as an elegant and media rich blog post, acts as an aggregated hub for these disparate brand beacons, and at the same time, each piece is findable and sharable within each social network and they all point back to the Social Media Release.

Also, the SMR can feature tags and outbound links to increase exposure in social networks and blog-specific search engines.

Social Media Releases not only feature social content to more visually and authentically tell stories and share information, they also provide the tools necessary for people to further socialize and interact with them.

For readers of an SMR, the options for interaction are virtually endless. They can respond through a "moderated" comment system, much in the same way they do today in online financial forums. They can grab pieces of the content, such as embeddable video, audio, documentation and images, to repurpose as blog posts and online stories, which can also send trackbacks to help pool collective coverage. Stakeholders can subscribe to RSS feeds for the entire news stream or just those related to financial/market information. Readers can send the story back out to the social web through bookmarking tools such as diigo or delicious, as well as crowdsourced news communities including Digg and Mixx. As the existing social tools evolve and new services are introduced, the potential for SMRs aka blog posts, are truly a blank canvas for PR, marketing, and the community to define how they're read and shared.

This is a Chance to Reach More People, Their Way

Executives and marketing professionals must now weigh whether the company Web site or blog are indeed a recognized channel of distribution and more importantly, whether these online properties meet public disclosure requirements under the new rules Regulation FD.

I believe this new guidance only expands the ability to share information using a variety of approved channels - bound by the legalities of doing so ethically, honestly, and informatively. It may or may not reduce costs associated with meeting disclosure, but it will in fact, improve the infrastructure for investor and public relations by socializing the process to more effectively communicate with investors and the people who care.

No, it doesn't kill wire services or press releases, it just changes how we create and distribute them.

The reality is that businesses can only benefit by not limiting itself to one form of communication. People seek, discover, and share information differently, and combining strategic wire, Web, and blog channels will only amplify reach and visibility.

Thanks to Jennifer Leggio and the IRWebReport for getting this story started.

Follow the SEC on Twitter.

Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pownce, Plaxo, FriendFeed, Plurk or Facebook.

Related articles on PR 2.0:

- Comcast Cares and Why Your Business Should Too, The Socialization of Service
- The Social Revolution is Our Industrial Revolution
- The Social Media Manifesto
- New Communication Theory
- The Evolution of Press Releases
- The Definitive Guide to Social Media Releases
- Wire Services Bypass Journalists and Bloggers

Monday, July 28, 2008

Comcast Cares and Why Your Business Should Too - The Socialization of Service


Bradley C. Bower for The New York Times

Frank Eliason, digital care manager at Comcast


There's certainly no shortage of discussions in the blogosphere that examine and spotlight companies that are listening to brand-related conversations across the Social Web to improve customer service, retention, and loyalty. But, when the New York Times decides to profile the emerging and critically important trend of two-way dialog between company representatives and stakeholders, we actually begin the process of crossing the chasm into the mainstream.

Continued attention of this caliber represents a significant and momentous opportunity to educate businesses on how to socialize their service and marketing departments and expedite the process of improving relationships with their customers, partners, and prospects.


Brian Stelter of The New York Times recently
published a story that represents a milestone for those who have actively preached about the values of integrating Social Media strategies in business service and communications over the recent years. At a high level, it recognizes the challenges, opportunity and associated benefits of proactively discovering relevant conversations and the value of solving problems. It's just the start of what companies need to think about before they participate, but at the very least, provides a compelling overview for why they can no longer stand on the sidelines.

Stelter profiled Comcast, one of the growing number of businesses using blogs, social networks, and micromedia services such as Twitter to monitor online conversations and complaints to hopefully transform unhappy or confused customers into brand ambassadors.


The company was ranked at the bottom of the latest American Customer Satisfaction Index, a service that tracks consumer opinions of more than 200 companies and is the focus of a massive concentration of public animosity offline and online, culminating in one such example, ComcastMustDie.com.


Those of us who have been consulting with companies on how to fix or avoid such cases of negative groundswell are immediately reminded of Jeff Jarvis and the summer of
Dell Hell. This is by far the most prevalent, landmark example of how an unhappy customer (in this case, one of the most influential people in journalism) can create a hurricane of brand deteriorating threads that ultimately reached a dangerous and damaging Category 5 status with every unsatisfied customer that joined the conversation.

Dell Hell and its effects on corporate branding was studied by various experts representing every major marketing discipline over the years, with one such report published by Response Source linking the negative impact to Dell's damaged reputation.

Richard Binhammer aka RichardatDell was tasked with the daunting and seemingly impossible mission of changing public preception and placing Dell on the long road back to recovery.

Through an active campaign of listening and engagement, Richard and his team,
learned and discovered opportunities to fix problems, answer questions, and improve customer service and product development. Dell deployed a Direct2Dell program, a blog that humanizes Dell by sharing stories written by the people in the company who are genuinely focused on improving relationships with customers. Dell also launched IdeaStorm, an online community to crowdsource and foster new ideas to help build more relevant products and solutions. The company is also actively monitoring blogs, social networks, and also Twitter to identify problems and solve them, and at the same time, cultivate a sense of community by genuinely and transparently participating even when there isn't a fire to extinguish.


Richard Binhammer, Brian Solis @
NewComm Forum

While Dell isn't at the top of the consumer service index, yet, it is making important and noteworthy strides that help it make the required internal changes that complement the activity led by Richard, Lionel
Menchaca and rest of the Direct2Dell team.

Richard further explained the intentions and observations of his work on behalf of Dell, "My actions on behalf of Dell are not mere talk and conversation. Everyday we follow up on the online listening and the learnings we get from customers, fixing issues and bringing customers' perspectives inside Dell -- real time, real views and real customer experiences. We believe that is improving our response times, contributing to better products and services and making us a better company, that is directly connecting with customers who care enough about us to talk about us on the web every day."


Now its Comcast's turn and many Social Media experts, CMOs, customer service executives, and CEOs around the world are paying attention. In defense of its brand and in a genuine process of displaying the intention of improving its service infrastructure, Frank Eliason was charged with creating and leading the new @ComcastCares program.

Similar to Dell, Eliason uses various social tools to listen to related online conversations discussing Comcast problems and challenges on blogs, Twitter, and discussions forums. His next step is to identify which activity requires an immediate response, which contributes to the arduous, but necessary methodology of building relationships one by one to show that Comcast does indeed care.

His main priority is first diffusing potentially dangerous threads that could spread virally by delivering resolutions that convert the despondent into satisfied customers.
In only five months, Mr. Eliason has already reached out to over 1,000 customers online. He was quoted in the New York Times in support of his activity, “When you’re having a two-way conversation, you really get to clear the air.”

I was also quoted in the story:
Brian D. Solis, who runs a public relations firm, FutureWorks, that specializes in social media, said companies like Comcast are “taking what used to be an inbound call center and turning it into an outbound form of customer relations” that can also help spot problems before they get out of hand.

Yes, Comcast and Dell are among those industry-leading companies that are redefining customer service and the entire service organization, proving that there are not only markets for conversations, but also opportunities to improve and amplify brand resonance in the process. And, instead of trimming costs and outsourcing service and support, there is an inherent, not yet fully documented, value in participating and helping. Investing time and money into relationships and outbound problem solving is taking precedence over the needs to justify the expense and its dividends are rewarded with satisfaction and referrals.

It's an opportunity cost and it's up to you to determine the value of participating versus the long-term costs of remaining silent.
Conversations are taking place with or without you online each and every day. Now for the first time, companies have a direct connection to those public voices that are challenging your messages and mission to shape perception and/or learn from the experience to fix the very things that fueled the conversation in the first place. If you don't respond, someone else will, most likely in the form of competition seizing the opportunity to convert your dispirited customers into new prospects.

Big Brother



Perhaps the most interesting public response to Comcast's activity is the feeling that they're being watched by the company...Comcast Is Watching US!


When a commenter or blogger makes claims of being mistreated by Comcast, Eliason contacts the person directly and steers the discussion toward a resolution.


Lyza Gardner, a vice president at a Web development company in Portland, Ore., was quoted in the article, “It’s one thing to spit vitriol about a company when they can’t hear you, it’s another, when the company replies. I immediately backed down and softened my tone when I knew I was talking to a real person.”


After being contacted by Eliason, Brandon Dillbeck, a student at the University of Washington, found the encounter a bit "creepy."

Dillbeck further explained his reaction, "The rest of his e-mail may as well have read, ‘Big Brother is watching you."


William Pomerantz, an employee at the
X Prize Foundation in Washington, asked his friends on Twitter to "wish him luck" on his third appointment for a Comcast installation. As in previous experiences, the technician was nowhere to be found and a telephone rep had accidentally disconnected his call.

According to the story in the New York Times, Eliason checked his messages during his train commute home and discovered Pomerantz’s comments. He responded that he would see what he could do, and within half an hour, a technician arrived.


Is this level of service "creepy?"


While some customers would prefer to vent without a response, I believe that the majority of customers just want their problems solved.
No matter what role we represent when we come to the table, the common thread that binds all of us together is that we're consumers and customers with opinions regarding our experiences with hundreds of products, services, and brands.

Looking at the world through a customer-focused lens, it's unfathomable that anyone would rather endure an unpleasant experience in exchange for personal, hands-on service.

This is exactly the point of all of this.
The Social Revolution is transforming everything from a broadcast, top-down form of message push and control to a dynamic interaction between people, which sets a new foundation for improved relationships and experiences.

This is Customer Service not Customer Empathy




There are several companies in addition to Dell and Comcast who "care" enough to engage with their constituents in Social Networks, blogs, forums, and also in micro communities such as Twitter and FriendFeed.
For example, H&R Block, Zappos, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airlines, and Whole Foods are among the leading brands using social channels to listen, respond, solve, and eventually evolve into a resource center for their communities.

With every new paradigm that promises to change the communications industry, there are naturally critics who question the viability and potential for widespread adoption and ROI. After all, if we didn't push back, we would never move industries forward.

With marcom and customer service attempting to embrace and participate in conversations, many experts are vocally contemplating whether or not conversations are scalable and, perhaps most importantly, calling into question the true ROI and intent of online conversations. Some have gone as far to call this level of outbound service a waste of time and money and a distraction from the real task of building better products and services.


Depending on the size of the company, one community manager may suffice. Larger brands will require teams of people that can escalate from five to 20, or ever more.
Comcast, for example, has already grown to a staff of seven in only five months, and will soon hit 10. This is not an insignificant line item. We're talking about tens of thousands of dollars per month in some cases.

Even though, it's a sizable investment, what's the price of not participating?

In this case, silence isn't golden.


If Eliason personally contacted at least 1,000 customers in five months and contributed to saving, conservatively estimating, 60-percent of them, what does that mean to the bottom line?

Let's say the average cost of Comcast service is $50 per month on average. That would mean that over a span of five months, it's feasible that Eliason salvaged at least $30,000 in services fees for Comcast. Note, I'm not factoring his monthly salary into the equation because, one, I don't know it, and two, the active process of reaching out to the community and helping them may well be a wash when compared to the goodwill that is bolstering the company's brand equity, positive referrals, and improved service records.


Of course companies are concerned with expenses, ignoring the cost compared to the reward isn't how businesses are run. One recent trend I'm hearing about more these days, is the outsourcing of the administrative aspects of listening to overseas teams to save money. These new agencies track key words across the Social Web and report them to their clients so that the community managers can parse and assign actions.

Now in terms of customer support versus customer empathy, it's as simply said as this...there is no market for messages and there is no market for lip service. Engaging in outreach is useless if it isn't supported by substance and follow through. Marketing "at" people is not the same as responding to them as individuals.

There are many examples of
astroturfing, fake comments, and hollow engagement that almost always hurts the brand or at the very least, brings it into question. This blatant form of schilling is not transparent nor is it conducive to building relationships. Any company seeking to engage with customers should note that the true value of doing so is not only to help, but also, in the act of doing so, help many more like them.

Listening is much more than moving and reacting to every negative criticism that takes place online. It's also the realization that their experiences and feedback are priceless and represent real world reactions that can actually fuel change. Saying the right thing at the right time is something that marketing has been more than capable of doing very well for decades. It's the ability to identify opportunities to continually change the infrastructure to compete for the future and improve the bottom line for the long-term.


I wanted to get Comcast's perspective on the subject, so contacted Frank via Twitter by sending a message to @ComcastCares. He responded within minutes.





I asked Frank if the company was concerned with ROI or was there an implied understanding of value in your activity?

Eliason replied, "We are a business and we are looking at methods to measure ROI, but the fact is all methods of obtaining the Voice of the Customer, although not always quantifiable do add value for any organization."


The next question explored whether Comcast's activity would eventually feed back into the company to improve the infrastructure and service organization. I was also curious if this was, for the moment, a move and react strategy to initially change perception and buy time to ultimately make the changes that will scale over time.


Frank demonstrated that Comcast cares with his answer, "It actually is an additional method to gather feedback from our customers. My team also manages an email method for customers to share feedback via email (located on the Contact Us page of Comcast.com - send your feedback to Rick). We have used feedback from both to improve processes. Some have been immediate while others may take some time, but they will happen.


I then asked what Comcast was learning from the experience and why other businesses should follow its example.

Eliason's answer was interesting and I appreciated his honest and grounded view of Social Media providing an additional channel to engage, "We learn a great deal from our customers through this channel and we learn better ways to present information, and what the pinch points are in the relationship. One of the more fascinating things has been customers that had complaints but never reached out to us to correct them. It is so much better to see them have the service we intend. I think companies should be where their customers are. Social media is just another channel, similar to the phone, chat or email."

The last question focused on whether this new outbound channel for participatory service changed the game for improving relationships within Comcast's community.


Frank's perspective is indicative of how other companies will view engagement, "It makes it much more personal and it provides the opportunity to provide clarification when necessary. We do not do this from a PR perspective (although there are members of the PR team that are also in social media). My team concentrates on the customer experience."


Actions Speak Louder than Words


Credit: Stefan Rosty

Many businesses viewed the process of executing social media as an exercise of “build it and they will come.” Most that decide to experiment with online services simply create profiles on Facebook and Myspace, accounts on Twitter, uploaded videos to YouTube and images to flickr, and simply hoped for a mass wave of friending and interaction.

Things just don't work that way.

But, the same tools that customers use to complain, gripe, and share experiences, are the very same tools that companies can use to discover consumer problems and work to deliver solutions.

By listening and observing, companies can accurately assess where their customers are sharing information and where their participation may or may not be welcome. The intelligence garnered from the ongoing task of listening tells us everything. The companies who are successfully listening are more intelligently engaging customers on their turf, in their way, in order to help them solve problems. In turn, they’re turning customer relationships into powerful competitive advantages.

It’s breaking new ground and it’s setting a new standard.

This new genre of community managers represent the internal voice of the customer. They operate as the Grand Central Station of inbound and outbound activity, discovering opportunities, channeling them to the appropriate people within specific departments, coordinating the required responses, and championing the change necessary to improve the infrastructure for the future.

Social Tools for Listening

There are many tools available to us for listening, both free and those that require subscriptions. It is the process of searching these networks which will reveal the conversational hubs that require our attention.

For more on the subject of how to listen, observe online cultures, and engage, please read "The Essential Guide to Social Media."

Recommended Reading:

Jeremiah Owyang's list of social strategists & community managers for enterprise corporations.
New Communication Theory and the New Roles for the New World of Marketing
The Social Revolution is Our Industrial Revolution
The Art of Conversation - It's About Listening Not Marketing
Will The Real Social Media Expert Please Stand Up?
Cultural Voyeurism and Social Media
Free ebook: Customer Service, The Art of Listening and Engagement Through Social Media
Intel Insiders to Advise Intel on Social Media Strategies
The Social Media Manifesto

---
Connect with me on
Twitter, Jaiku, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pownce, Plaxo, FriendFeed, or Facebook. ---

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Facebook Connects Your Brand Across the Social Web



I attended the Facebook f8 developer conference yesterday in San Francisco and I’m still recovering from the overwhelming experience.

Thousands of developers flocked to the San Francisco Design Center to see their Social Sherpa in person and calibrate with his vision for the next year of propagating the social graph. It’s indeed a movement and his influence can not be underestimated. Comparisons to Steve Jobs were broadcast as freely as the ideas for new apps that were exchanged in almost every conversation.

I was lucky enough to get a front row seat for Zuckerberg’s state of the social network and his plans for making Facebook more pervasive in the socialization of online content and relationships.

Facebook is evolving into our dashboard for relationships and everything we do online, creating a cohesive and simplified connection between us to change and improve how we communicate.

Their mission is no small task, “Give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”

One of the many announcements that was made at the company’s second annual developer conference was Facebook Connect, and it just may well be the epicenter of our social activity.

With just a bit of code, Facebook Connect enables seamless integration between Web sites, pages, communities, and networks and the Facebook identity system. For example, if you’re commenting on a blog hosted on the Moveable Type platform, you can now login with your Facebook details and not only will your comment and link to your Facebook profile appear on the blog, the activity of commenting is also linked back into your activity feed for your friends and colleagues to see. Digg, another example that was shared on stage, also supports FB Connect, making it possible for Diggers to log on using their centralized Facebook ID and for each story they digg, the activity is documented back on their profile.

Facebook Connect partners include Amiando, CBS.com, CitySearch, CNET, CollegeHumor, Disney-ABC, Evite, Flock, Hulu, Kongregate, Loopt, Plaxo, Radar, Red Bull, Seesmic, Socialthing!, StumbleUpon, The Insider, Twitter, Uber, Vimeo and Xobni.

Yes, it’s practically a direct competitor to the important OpenID system that has invested over the years in the education and development of unifying the social web and personal identities - with one login. FB Connect however, assumes that you want a profile in its proprietary social network, which may or may not be a bad thing. It’s ambitious to say the least. And, unlike OpenID, Facebook is not only the keeper of your online identity, but as I’ve written about for two years, it is also an ideal hub for your online brand. If Facebook is listening, I’m not alone in suggesting that the company should also integrate OpenID. It would be the right, and most promising, thing to do.

FB Connect transforms the social network into a portable profile that travels with you across the Web, placing you and your brand at the center of the experience.

This announcement is significant in my opinion, not just for the opportunity it represents today, but for the implementations and opportunities next month, next quarter, next year, and beyond.

The ongoing integration of support for social services in the Facebook NewsFeed is aggregating and expediting personal lifestreams and quickly becoming representative of our true online activity, painting a vivid picture of who we are and what we represent online and in the real world. With FB Connect the previously isolated silo distributes your identity and creates a direct link back to your profile, which ultimately, is a bright, powerful, and distributed beacon for your personal brand.

Facebook Connect also further socializes and unites the Web.

Now, for example, static Websites can socialize, creating a dynamic link between content and people. Businesses and communities can now directly connect corporate brands with personal brands, and more notable, the people behind them. Social networks can build and leverage expertise and reputation and carry thought leadership, preferences, causes, and relationships from community to community. Facebook Connect is a powerful catalyst for investing in and increasing Social Capital.

Remember, Facebook “public” profiles are indexed in online search engines and can be among the top results when your name is searched.

In the real world, your online reputation proceeds you.

For more on the subject, please read:

Jeremiah Owyang

For more pictures from Facebook, please visit bub.blicio.us or the following albums on flickr:

Mark Zuckerberg Keynote

f8

Mark Zuckerberg Press Conference

Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pownce, Plaxo, FriendFeed, or Facebook.

Monday, July 21, 2008

New Communication Theory and the New Roles for the New World of Marketing



In the era of the "new" social Web, communications is actually evolving back to its origins of communicating with people, not at them. It may seem implied, but communications does not, for the most part, embody two-way discussions.

Over the years, communications has evolved into a one-way distribution channel that broadcasts messages at target audiences. In the process, communications stopped being about communication, focusing instead on the marketing aspects of top-down message push and control, what we now commonly refer to as marketing communications aka marcom. Marcom embodies traditional and new marketing branches that include advertising, PR, Web/interactive, event, among many other disciplines (depending on the organization).

With the soaring popularity and adoption of Social Media, companies are realizing that in addition to marketing communications, listening and engagement is quickly becoming pervasive and necessary in order to compete for precious, yet thinned and distributed attention. The days of focusing solely on Web stickiness, eyeballs and clickthroughs are fading. These are the days of immersion, conversations, engagement, relationships, referrals, and action.

So what do we call this important and history making transformation?

Some call it Social Media Marketing, others refer to it as Conversational Marketing, and factions of other thought leaders simply classify it as the socialization of the media and marketing in general.

In the world of marcom, we’re simply placing the communication back in communications. It’s the transformation of monologue to dialog, and it’s breaking down that walls and barriers that separate people from brands.

The problem with Social Media Marketing and Conversational Marketing as classifiers is that both still involve the word “marketing.” It doesn’t imply authenticity and the two-way process of listening, internalizing, and responding. Each is complementary to traditional marketing, but their intent, practice, and metrics are different. And, the socialization of communications is also unique.

Social Media Marketing is the use of social media tools to participate online in distinct people-powered communities. Conversational Marketing is first the understanding that markets are conversations and at the same time, conversations are also markets. The tools, channels, and approaches are different in this case, and actually span across advertising, marketing, SEO/search, widget marketing, word of mouth marketing (WOMM), among others – mostly. In the world of PR, Social Media Marketing, for the most part, concentrates on blogger relations and comment strategies. This is the practice of working with bloggers to retell your story and also sharing feedback and insight within comments that link back to something helpful to the community, while also benefiting the company you’re representing.

Again, the difference across each of these disciplines is the intent, execution, and results of any program.

But what’s transpiring now is so different, so revolutionary, that it deserves its own classification, for now, in order to advance within organizations and impact its soul and change its outlook and role within society.



For the first time in years, we’re seeking to adapt Harold Lasswell’s maxim as a means of describing the field of communication Theory, “who says what to whom in what channel with what effect.”

Factoring peoplenomics into the modified Communication Theory aka Social Theory equation, it now epitomizes, “who hears what, who says what to whom, in what channel, with what intent, and with what effect.”

The definitions and results will radically vary depending on how you mix and match those variables and which marketing or media discipline you represent.

It’s now the art and science of socializing _____ (fill in the blank.)

This is the era of our “Industrial Revolution:"

Towards the end of the 1990s, the Web, and its architects, forged the tools that would spark a renaissance of influence and empowerment. These tools would inspire people to build new interconnected platforms for content that would collectively and ultimately ignite a social revolution and usher a new exchange for information that has all the signs and economic potential of a modern day Industrial Revolution.

The socialization of media and information is our Industrial Revolution. For the first time in history, media technology and the tools and channels for broadcasting information has been disrupted and open for true global collaboration, while also effectively changing how people interact with each other.

The Social Revolution is the catalyst for the democratization of content and exchange of information, but we're still experimenting and wrestling with the true impact of this change and how exactly these new models, on every side of the equation, will ultimately settle.

So, if we’re in the throes of a Social Revolution, does the act of socializing outbound communications require a new division within an organization?

Even though, Social Media is a stage in the overall evolution of marketing and media, and it will give way to something new and different.

In the meantime, what do we name this new division or discipline and is it simply an extension of the existing marketing department that already encompasses advertising, PR, marketing, Web, and new media? A rapidly growing list of organizations are hiring experts to lead the integration, with some earning titles of Social Media Officer and complementing existing Chief Marketing Officers.

Certainly there’s no shortage of genuine and purported Social Media Experts and Social Media Gurus. But what does that mean to be an expert, and more importantly, who’s truly qualified to socialize real world marketing departments with real world business demands, dependencies, infrastructure, opportunities and responsibilities?

The answer is, experience and the understanding of business and service dynamics and how the socialization of communications, development, and support impacts and benefits people and their peers. Period.

And, not the level of experience that one earns from talking about Social Media or simply participating in the newest networks.



Conversations don't scale. Talk is cheap and action speaks louder than words.

It takes so much more than the ability listen and engage. It definitely encompasses much more than the ability to create profiles on every popular social platform and the process of befriending everyone across the networks. It’s the ability to identify meaningful conversations, comprehend them, determine those valuable enough to participate, and then feed that collective insight back into the organization (marketing, service, produce development, etc.) for positive change. It also requires the ability to uncover opportunities and crises to trendcast into proactive initiatives that prevent reactionary and defensive responses.

Proactive = relevancy.
Reactive = damage control.

As good friend Hugh MacLeod observed four years ago in The HughTrain, "There's only one thing harder than starting a new business: Re-inventing an old one."



Web and social tech expert Louis Gray calls Social Media Experts the “new” Webmasters. Social tools developer Greg Narain compares the current state of Social Media to the “e” in the old “e-conomy.” Early on, I predicted that we would eventually see Social Media Officers as the new Chief Marketing Officers.

They’re correct. And, what they share is the fact that these classifiers emerged to document important shifts, migrations, and growth stages of new mediums as well as the roles that further solidified them as catalysts for maturation.

Obviously, we’re in need for a new, important stepping stone in order to escalate to the next phase in influencer and customer interaction.

Brian Morissey wrote in a recent article for Adweek, that brands need a new kind of leader, claiming, “As conversations with customer matter more, brands seek social-media evangelists.”

So, which division within an organization is ready to fund this experimentation? Is it one division or is it an amalgamation of several departments?

So far, experience shows that it’s different depending on the company, and the champions within each.

Peter Kim, formerly an analyst for Forrester research, recently joined a startup to help large companies engage in social media. The company was funded with $50 million from Austin Ventures was created by Razorfish founder Jeff Dachis.

Chris Brogan, one of the most vocal authorities on Social Media, advises traditional businesses, organizations and individuals on how to use social media and social networks to build relationships and deliver value.

Deborah Schultz, a social web strategist and marketing innovator, was tasked with creating a lab to explore new business and marketing models for consumer powerhouse Proctor & Gamble.

Scott Monty, a marketing expert, was recently hired to socialize the Ford brand.

Dan Schawbel, a personal branding evangelist, is the first Social Media Specialist at EMC.

Jackie Peters, an interactive and social Web marketing authority is helping Sun socialize its Startup Essentials program

Shel Holtz, a PR pro, is assisting Coca Cola and other consumer brands into Social worlds.

Connie Bensen, a community relations expert, is the Community Manager for Network Solutions.

Chris Heuer, a Web and New Media visionary, is currently guiding Intel Corporation on best practices and new opportunities for Social strategies. The company also tapped several social activists, including yours truly, to advise the company on Social Media.

Marshall Kirkpatrick, a thought leading blogger in the Web 2.0 landscape, actively publishes stories related to how companies can or can not benefit from community managers, those charged with listening to the conversations fueling relevant social networks and coordinating necessary responses and change – outbound and internally.

Personally, I've received calls from major beverage, auto, medical, green, aerospace, and entertainment brands, asking advice and seeking referrals for an internal Social champion and expert – all with the last few weeks.

The list goes on and on. These stories are only the representative few of a bigger shift within existing marketing departments as they attempt to socialize their brands.

These are the times when the social revolution is redefining how we not only communicate with our constituents, but how we as a collective organization of people, process the information, intelligence and insight garnered from external conversations to more effectively and genuinely participate.

But, Social Media isn’t limited to marketing or outbound activity. Social Media benefits and develops every department within an organization. And it’s for this reason, that its future and its effectiveness depends on its champions, participants, analysts, and opportunists.
The intelligence that is collected during the process of listening and observation affects everything. We can improve our products and services based on the real world input and feedback from a true, vested public focus group. We can improve and tailor our story specifically to the assemblies of people we're hoping to reach in a way that's convincing and accurate. We can enhance our inbound customer service practices to transform cost centers into customer investments. In the process, we’re humanizing our brands and transforming customers into evangelists, people into storytellers, and brands into resource centers.

We’re connecting brands, and the people representing them to new groups of important people, in the places where they discover and share new content and in turn, interact with each other.

This is the latest incarnation of digital communications and for the moment, it takes us back to the foundation of relationships that started everything – this time however, it’s not only the tools that have changed, it’s the realization that people matter to everything we do.

It’s the socialization of:

Communications
Advertising
PR
Customer Service
Product Development
Interactive
Sales

Whatever discipline you represent, you are the champion for the socialization of that branch as it relates to the greater good of the company, brand, and stakeholders. Only you can specifically understand how Social strategies affect and complement the day-to-day campaigns that are already working well for your organization.

Ultimately, social initiatives will be implemented and deployed independently by each department, working with a social coordinator such as a Community Manager or Social Media Mangaer in conjunction with a CMO, VP of marketing or even a Chief Social Officer. Everything depends on the existing infratructure and social-savvy of the organization. However, it won’t always be simply rooted in Social strategies. As the communications landscape evolves, business will always be influenced by new and interactive media. The landscape of communicatins and the tools used to connect people and stories will continue to evolve. Remember, this is about the sociology of Social Media. Technology changes, people don’t.

Just wait until you see how semantic platforms will change the dynamics of information discovery, creation, and connectivity.

In the meantime, the future of your business hinges on the ability for champions to arise, implement, and justify the socialization of your company’s ability to listen, empathize, respond, advise, and evolve based on the online discussions that are currently taking place with or without you.

Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pownce, Plaxo, FriendFeed, or Facebook.

Related articles on PR 2.0:

The Social Revolution is Our Industrial Revolution
The Art of Conversation - Thoughts and Observations
The Art of Conversation - It's About Listening and Internalizing Before Action
The Essential Guide to Social Media
PR 2.0 Puts the Public Back in Public Relations
The Social Media Manifesto

Monday, July 14, 2008

The Social Revolution is Our Industrial Revolution



Broadcast and print media and the services that support the creation and distribution of information are not dead and Social Media is not going to get indicted for holding the smoking gun.

These powerful, influential, and age-old industries are however, undergoing some of their most radical transformations and metamorphoses in order to adapt to the elusive and rapidly shifting information landscape.

Money is migrating away from traditional media as well as the industries and services that support it - from creation to distribution.

Is Social Media to blame?

Any expert, thought leader, or analyst will claim that this transition was christened in the 90s with the popularization of the Internet aka Web 1.0. And, those who have contributed to its evolution will tell you that "social media" is already starting to wear thin among those in their respective echo chambers. There's a bell curve of adoption, and most of these discussions are on the far left of it. "The rest of us" will never refer to the socialization of information as "social media." To them it will simply be regarded as media, conversations, reading, and sharing.

But behind the scenes, history is in the making.

Evolution is evolution - and it's happened before us and will continue after we're gone. But, what's taking place now is much more than change for the sake of change. The socialization of content creation, consumption and participation, is hastening the metamorphosis that transforms everyday people into participants of a powerful and valuable media literate society.

These are the times that experts will look back and officially classify as the Social Revolution, distinctly and separately from the Internet Revolution. These is the genre when big media and its supporting services started to listen and we the people embraced and employed the ability to share our individual and collective voices.

We're at the dawn of new era in media production, participation, and literacy. You are making
history.

Death vs. Evolution

Media, in general, isn't dead, it's changing.

Yes print and broadcast advertising is down and online screen time is up. But, dollars aren't evaporating, they're migrating and propagating as we continue to invest in the top-down strategies that still work, albeit differently than before, while simultaneously investing in more niche-focused channels to reach and interact with specific groups of people directly.

In the last century, the world has witnessed some of the most incredible and radical advancements in the business of influence and perception management, including, but not limited to:

The printing press.

The wire.

Radio.

TV.

Satellite.

Network infrastructure.

The Web.

The Social Web.

Clouds.


Media is experiencing a textbook Darwinian definition of survival of the fittest as the human race and our patterns for discovering, sharing and producing content matures. It will re-emerge as a more dynamic, nimble, and innovative medium.

Mainstay brands will persevere, but the cost of their education to learn how to compete for the future will be great. Some will borrow models from those who already proved new rules for engagement, others will acquire and integrate the new and rising influencers who lead by example, and a few poor souls will wait until it's too late only to awaken to a daunting challenge of creating and earning presence and relevance in a new economy.



The Evolution of Influence and the Democratization of Content

Looking back over the last several decades, it's practically unbelievable to fathom the depth and vastness of our media-dependent societies and the pivotal role influence plays in defining who we are and what we believe. The business of information creation and distribution has driven and defined our global economies. In the last century, the increasingly rapid pace of innovation has globalized, localized, and streamlined
the distribution of information, what we thought about, and how we processed, news, trends and current events - and in turn, influenced how our societies evolved in the real world.

In addition to pioneers, big business, lobbyists, and outside interests, the media industry was and still is shaped by journalists, entrepreneurs, enthusiasts, communicators, and zealots who were inspired to share their voice, their insight, and their passions, their way. Through news, editorial, opinion, and field reporting, media, and information, is the common thread that stitches people and societies together.

It's how we learn.

It inspires us.

It contributes to who we are.

Towards the end of the 1990s, the Web, and its architects, forged the tools that would spark a renaissance of influence and empowerment. These tools would inspire people to build new interconnected platforms for content that would collectively and ultimately ignite a social revolution and usher a new exchange for information that has all the signs and economic potential of a modern day Industrial Revolution.
The Industrial Revolution was a period in the late 18th and early 19th centuries when major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, and transportation had a profound effect on the socioeconomic and cultural conditions in Britain. The changes subsequently spread throughout Europe and North America and eventually the world, a process that continues as industrialization. The onset of the Industrial Revolution marked a major turning point in human society; almost every aspect of daily life was eventually influenced in some way.
The socialization of media and information is our Industrial Revolution.



For the first time in history, media technology and the tools and channels for broadcasting information has been disrupted and open for true global collaboration, while also effectively changing how people interact with each other.

The Social Revolution is the catalyst for the democratization of content and exchange of information, but we're still experimenting and wrestling with the true impact of this change and how exactly these new models, on every side of the equation, will ultimately settle.

The sheer volume of social innovation, adoption, new literacy and more importantly, the evolution of human engagement using new tools is revolutionary indeed.

It has changed and continues to shape the landscape for the procurement and exchange of information, education, and ideas as well as impacting and cultivating the dynamics and economics of conversations.

It is influencing the business of how and what media and brands broadcast.

It is redefining how companies respond to the marketplace, including customers, stakeholders, and new influencers.

It is changing how people discover and share and also empowers them to create in addition to consume.

And, it's introducing the study of peoplenomics and how we not only have access to the Web and a vault full of social tools to publish and share experiences online, we now also have the power and ability to shape perception and evoke emotion and responses that can positively or negatively affect our economy.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then observation, mobility, and reaction are the attributes of, and the spark for, evolution.

The era new media is inviting content producers, consumers, and participants to contribute to and invest in the direction of our economy, one conversation at a time. The democratization of content is humanizing the business of media as well as the companies, brands, services, and the products that define them.

In the era of Socialized Media, relationships are the new currency and participation and collaboration are emerging as the new information exchange.

Connect with me on Twitter, Jaiku, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pownce, Plaxo, FriendFeed, or Facebook.

Related articles on PR 2.0:
The Art of Conversation - It's About Listening and Not Marketing
Free ebook: The Essential Guide to Social Media
Free ebook: Customer Service, The Art of Listening and Engagement Through Social Media

The Art of Conversation - Thoughts and Observations
The Social Media Manifesto
Cultural Voyeurism and Social Media
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