I just had to take a moment to comment on a recent article I read over at MediaPost about copyright trolls, RightHaven, and their heavy-handed tactics in copyright enforcement. The article written by Wendy Davis cites a lawsuit brought by RightHaven against an autistic blogger for $150,000 for posting an image originally posted by the Denver Post.

Following what I understand is their standard modus operandi , RightHaven does not first ask for compliance, they file a suit first and ask questions later. No warning, no letter or email requesting compliance – just a lawsuit that the offending party needs to respond to or end up being thrown under the ever-turning wheels of justice. Justice?  Sorry, this action does not appear to be about justice – it seems to be about RightHaven lawyers looking for more and more billable hours I think.

In the article, Reporters Without Borders, (a free speech advocacy group,) has asked the Denver Post parent organization to please reconsider their association and behavior in respect to employing RightHaven tactics. They, and I, have no problem with a media agency wanting to retain control over its creative output, but is hiring a lawyer to bring suit the right first step if you believe a copyright infringement has occurred?

What ever happened to the idea of just asking to have the content removed?  Polite manners aside, what’s the ROI in paying a lawyer $250 an hour vs. a staffer $20 an hour to send an email that says the same?  If the offending party does not comply, maybe the $250 an hour lawyer IS the right way to go, but I’d make a bet that the $20 would often get the same result – and save the Denver Post thousands of dollars in legal fees.

This kind of behavior deserves the full light of the blogosphere to be regularly and constantly turned on it (stay in touch on these guys at RightHavenVictims.com).  As to RightHaven and the Denver Posts’ behavior – I just want to say shame on you guys! If you want to protect your content and save money, think about email and letters before lawyers. But going after a 20 year old autistic bloggers?! WTF?!

Related posts:

• When Did You Join Twitter?
• Twitter Updates Follow Notices
• The Trinity of Social Media explored – The Blog

– Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlett

I was talking to friend about the art / science of social media applied to business and we got to a point that I was reminded of a story about the great (albeit fictional) detective Sherlock Holmes.

In one of stories I seem to remember reading an exchange that went something like this (and I paraphrase extensively here) – Holmes makes a comment on some aspect of his companion, Dr. Watson.  In response to the comment, Watson asks “how ever did you come to that conclusion my dear Holmes?”  Holmes says he will explain how he arrived at his conclusion and after which he says that Watson will then conclude that the initial observation was obvious.  Watson promises to not jump to any such comment.   Holmes goes on to explains his process of deduction, arriving quickly at the conclusion he had just given Watson to which, Watson states, “well, now that you put it that way, Holmes it’s obvious…” only to stop short and realize that he had just broken the promise he had made to the master sleuth just a minute ago.

So it goes when working with an experienced professional.  They know what to do because they have seen or done the work before.  Once the layperson sees it before them, they jump to the conclusion that the result of the work was obvious – which in hindsight it may be but at the time of asking, the result and sometimes even the question was a mystery.

Working with an experienced social media consultant does not suggest the answer will not be learned by the business and become obvious – eventually; but the engagement with the consultant will mean that days, weeks and even months will be pared off the time needed to enact a successful strategy and the ROI of the engagement is sure to follow.

Take Away – Look for an experienced social media consultant and don’t offer to take them to coffee or lunch to ‘pick their brain’; offer to engage them fairly and you’ll save the irreplaceable commodity of time.

Related posts:

• What if the ROI was higher by being nice?
• A 3-Tiered Model for Measuring Social Media Success and How Social Media Saved Pitney Bowes $300K – An Interview with Aneta Hall / Pitney Bowes – Podcast Episode 2
• Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-04-19

• My laptop died, had to get a new one and rebuild it
• I was uprooted / moved from one home / office to one in Central Phoenix (BIG transition there, still settling in)
• My 18 year old son moved in
• Took a business trip to Malaysia with Guy Powell & Jerry Dimos, my co-authors on the ROI of Social Media – able to talk to several new and prospective clients
• Opened files for several new / prospective clients here in Arizona – thanks to some word-of-mouth referrals made by some dear friends
• Lastly, and possibly most impactful was I went through a hugely disruptive spat of news regarding my dearly loved twin sister Stephanie and the potential diagnosis of her developing a brain tumor; a second opinion says she doesn’t have one and we’re all praying that that becomes a non-incident.

…and you get the idea.  No apologies, life has continued to happen and my media creation has lagged.

I am also way down on my media consumption; I usually read / review several hundred blog posts a day; not for several weeks have I been able to open a Google Reader that did not belong to a client project.  I always share what I like that I find and you can subscribe to my shared items here – I call it the ‘Best of The Best Feed’.

On the good side – there is a HUGE backlog of content on my computer that should start moving to the web here soon.  Podcasts from companies using social media with good effect, videos of the authors of the ROI of Social Media and a new community site for the book which should be coming up any day now. 

The ROI of Social Media community site is nearing a soft launch (click here to subscribe to this blog feed from Feedburner – you’ll get notice when it opens) – The community site will be a place where we’ll concentrate content from the book and invite people into a dialog focused on the models we present in the book for measuring and managing media.  It will be a place where we all can exchange ideas, improve the case studies and we can fulfill the promises for online content we made in the book – one of the elements we present is a model for evaluating measurement and monitoring tool and we promised to provide an online crowd-sourced director of tools.  We’ve seen some really good directories on this topic so far, referencing what we all know will be a part of the community function.

In any case, I’m feeling a bit more balance coming back into my efforts so the content should start back up.  Thank you to everyone who has supported me in these efforts over the last few months, especially Cynthia, who is my girlfriend, best friend and who has been the ‘wind beneath my wings’, supporting me in just amazing ways.

Look for more content soon!  Good to be back!

Related posts:

• Launching theSocialMediaBible.com
• The Trinity of Social Media Explored Still Further – The Social Network
• Remembering Steven Groves II

Sessions has a year-round (3 semesters) enrollment model, graduation certificates that are presented monthly and classes that can be enrolled in anytime for enrolled students.  So his use is everyday for the various tools Session employs (blog, micro-blog and social networks) to connection to the audience.

What’s the biggest obstacles for the growth of social media presence for Sessions?  Scott says ‘patience’, he sees the the education product characteristics is not the commodity of a fast moving consumer good with a low price point.  His effort is to get subscribers to engage in all areas in a way that they appreciate and have a value associated with the Sessions brand.

Scott has determined that for Sessions, there is a way to use social media to establish a lifetime value with the audience – education is pretty much a one-shot sale in most cases.  The maturation of the relationship allows a prospect for Session.edu to become a student, attend classes and graduate into the business community.  At some point he can trust alumni to evangelize the Sessions.edu product and he does not find that they need to scrub or moderate content.

Community members come to the Sessions presence on Facebook, he has to be sensitive that they may all come for different reasons; some are prospects and others are graduates – it’s why the Facebook audience gets a cultural message in that channel and not a selling message.  They do then migrate the graduate user base to another social network, one more business oriented.

What does Scott identify as key tactics to designing a successful social media presence? 

• Quality vs. quantity needs to be a central objective 
• Sincerity is important
• It’s called social media for a reason, business need not abuse the trust the consumers gives you 
• Be persistent – social media is not a set and forget proposition
• Tactically, don’t over think it – get the content out there, do a soft launch and get started

Play / Download Scott Chappell / Session College Episode 2 Podcast Here

You can find Session College at Sessions.edu and Scott is available at scott@sessions.edu.

This is the final episode of the two part podcast with Scott Chappell.  Guy Powell and I want to thank him; we appreciate his perspective and taking the time to share it with us in our podcast interview!

Here are links to material related to the interview that you may find useful; the entire conversation in one extended recording and soon, a transcript of the conversation

Play / Download Scott Chappell / Sessions College Entire Episode Podcast Here

Read / view the Scott Chappell / Sessions College Podcast Transcript at Scribd.com

We’re very interested in your perspective on the topic and, if you have a favored presenter or person who can add to the conversation, please let us know – we’re looking to interview him / her and put it up here!

Thank you again to you our listeners – hope you enjoyed the effort and work we put into it!

The Podcast and Credit For Where Credit is Due – This transcript was developed from a live interview on Wednesday, February 3, 2010 between Scott Chappell, Guy Powell and Steven Groves using FreeConferenceCall.com.

The podcast interview was downloaded and processes in Audacity, which is available from SourceForge.com, and with ‘4toFloor.wav’ music loop from member ‘Rooks’ and posted at SoundSnap.com.

The transcripts are provided courtesy of Institute for International Research, the organizers of the MeasureUp Conference.

The Introduction Voice Talent is Ms. Cynthia Propst.

Related posts:

• Increase Touch and Engagement Using Social Marketing – Scott Chappell / Sessions College Podcast Interview
• The ROI of Social Media Series – Marcel LeBrun CEO of Radian6 Podcast Episode 3
• Managing Hundreds of Millions of Messages – Microsoft Marketing in AsiaPac

These options assume a text blog, but even if it is a video blog or any other type of social platform, we agree that the actions that might be taken are not infinite. 

Is One Action More Valuable Than Another? I think so.  Subscribing to a blog, or opting-in to receive more content from the same author or source, is a much higher value action than just dropping in to consume a single article.  Thinking enough of the content or the author to share with others in your network begins to establish you as an advocate of the content, not just a visitor that consumes the content – this is a holy grail of online marketing, to have advocates for your brand, not just consumers of your content.

The process that takes a content consumer from one level to another is worthy of evaluation by the marketing community and as the content consumer moves along the continuum, ranking the value of one activity over another becomes meaningful.

Why Try to Establish The Value of an Activity or Mention? By assigning a value to the activity, you can develop a more easily conveyed ‘score’ that allows you to determine in non-financial terms, how well you are doing in the effort to leverage social media as a marketing tactic.  The score needs to be couched with other data I imagine, such as number of posts contained in the score and some factor that recognizes the age of the post, but if we are intent on establishing an ROI at some point of the effort, this kind of key indicator data serves a meaningful purpose.

Meet the Social Interaction Scoring Table.  My associate, Guy Powell and I have been discussing and working on the ROI of Social Media and during the conversation this notion came to me.  From that point I developed this table as an example of the scoring that might apply to not just a blog post, but a wide variety of social media platforms.

I share it here for your comment and to open a community dialog on the concept of being able to score the Social Interaction and how it begins to support the process of measuring mentions.

Related posts:

• Coffee Shop Social Media Case Study – How to Give Away A Product and Get Results
• The ROI of Social Media Series – Mike Talbot and Aaron Newman / Alterian SM2 – Episode 3
• Twitter’s Social Capital is Unlimited – Joe Jaffe is wrong…

This post is about the third and final element of the Trinity – a social network.

The idea of social networking is not new.  It’s actually pretty ancient – think back to the time when when people gathered around commonly-held or agreed upon beliefs, ideas or tenets.  Among the myriad possibilities, you could choose to align yourself with civic, faith-based, or business-based networks.   People actively networked with one another, promoted one another’s reputation, shared in one another’s prosperity, and stood together to be counted for whatever reason.

Fast forward to today; this same kind of network is migrating to online communities.  We, as a culture, are tearing down the barriers of time and distance using online tools and technology.

People without any technical skills can now use the technology to communicate with one another regardless of location or time of day.  They are too; with housewives in Gilbert, Arizona, Middle School kids with cell phones and brands with global reach are all discovering what they have in common.  Whether you see it as a virtual water cooler, the neighborhood corner, a cocktail party or night club, you are right. 

Online is fast becoming the place people gather to share their ideas, photos, video and more.  It’s also getting easier to find out where people you like, and are like you are hanging out – try searching for almost any topic that interests you in a search engine and you will likely be presented with a variety of online communities.

Audience and Strategy -  The audience you want to connect to and the purpose for the communication will guide your selection of how to best deploy or involve your company in a social networking platform.  You may find a private network will meet you needs best, but likewise a large pre-existing network with a global reach might better serve you efforts to connect to your audience.

Are My Prospects or Customers Online in Social Networks?  Yes, The Pew Internet and American Life Project reported in January of 2009 that “The share of adult internet users who have a profile on an online social network site has more than quadrupled in the past four years — from 8% in 2005 to 35% now”.  They categorize adults as 18+.  The fastest growing segment has recently been an older demographic (25+), but the 18-25 demographic is still the dominate age band.

Nielsen in March 2009 reported that social networks / blogs now 4th most popular online category – ahead of personal e-mail.  Does that make it important? Only if you want to actually connect with people and engage in a real conversation.

What Should I Expect? People – lots of people and variety – lots of variety.  When referring to online community involvement and participation, a popular statistic running around is 90-9-1.  90 percent of the visitors to the site will visit and not interact – they are only there to consume whatever content you are posting.  9 percent will interact periodically and if the subject is something compelling to them.  1 percent is the number you can count on to drive the conversation and to be regularly involved in the discussion.

What About The Security of My Information? Public or private community?  Open or closed?  The answer to this concern is yes; you can be as open or protective of your online presence as you pretty much wish to be.  Some of the controls and the settings are not intuitive as they might be, but in most cases you can restrict or manage how your profile and information appears and to whom the information is available to.

Why Would I Do This For My Business? For any one of a myriad of reasons.  The top three departments or functions in a company that seem to benefit most from the use of social media are -

• Customer Service
• Sales
• Marketing

It is emerging that there are other departments that might benefit from the implementation of social media tools, but these are the ones that will get the most immediate return on the investment of time and resources.

Engagement becomes an effort to blend content in the proper context so that the audience will hear about you, discover you are engaging and opt-in to create a meaningful dialog. 

Summary - The ability to craft a strategy that is both compelling and meaningful does require regular attention and you will spend a lot of time and effort until you hit on an effective strategy by yourself. 

It would be an error and a social media faux pax to use social media to broadcast a message one-way; that’s the model of traditional media that is unsustainable and unwelcome in a most social communities.  Businesses, nonprofits and individuals are exploring the change and the most forward looking of them are aggressively pursuing online strategies that listen to the community and engage them – that’s the way to do it.

Related posts:

• The Top 3 Key Apps for Driving Social Media Marketing Traffic – Updating the Trinity
• The Trinity of Social Media Explored Further – Microblogging
• The Trinity of Social Media

We get a lot of questions at TSMB Media about social media in general and blogs in particular.  This is a foundational post in a series about The Trinity of Social Media and blogs in particular that I hope you use, enjoy and reference often.

Lets start at the beginning - 

What is a blog?  A blog is a collection of articles, often by the same author or company, that is presented on the Internet, often for public consumption and comment.  It can contain any type of electronic or online content – audio, video or text.  I suspect that when we can transmit smell or touch over the Internet, it’ll contain them as well!  So a blog is not just the sharing of text for everyone, it is a sharing mechanism for whatever kind of content you might have.  I like text on a blog most, but that is because of the way the search engines index content – they work best on text right now. The tools are coming into play that will better index image and video content, but the technology is just not there yet or widely used by the audience – text is easiest to index right now.

What do you talk about on a blog?  Your blog is where you, as the individual or as a company, will create posts (or articles) of 200 or so words that showcase your company, your product, and your business philosophy.  Whatever you feel would be relevant to communicate to your audience of customers, prospects and stakeholders.  I have clients that have not one blog, but three!  One is targeted at their core business audience, one is more personal and one is a place they post industry observance.  Each of them draws a particular type of visitor or reader.  Likewise, I have clients that only have one blog and there, they post just video files with some text for consumption.

The content on a business blog then is primarily about the organization and why you are the company your customer deal with and prospective customers should deal with.  That is not all your blog should contain though – endeavor to share a bit about the company picnic, pictures and posts of internal events, videos of subjects that relate to your products, links to other blogs that support your comments or suppliers and places your products are being used or demonstrated. 

How often do you use or post to a blog?  Frequency of posts is relative to where you are in the life of the blog and the number of current visitors and subscribers.  Early on in the life of your blog you may want to post more often.  Frequent posting leads the search engines to make a determination that the posting source is a relevant news source and should be visited often.  More frequent updates = more frequent search engine visits, more search engine visits = higher authority, higher authority = better placement in search engine ranking.

So just post to a blog and I get readers right? Nope – not quite how it works.  In the Trinity of Social Media under the ‘Platform’ leg of the model, we point out two items; a ‘Posting / Publishing’ leg and one under ‘Reading / Commenting’. 

The reading of complementary and competitive content blogs is a very important step.  Participating in blogsphere will drive readers and comments / links about your blog elsewhere on the web – all good relative to your search engine ranking.

Your blog should be positioned as the foundational element in a social media strategy.  It should be the place you refer people to in your microblog post for more info, it becomes a place you connect to your off-line marketing, and it is where you always link your social network profile.

Why am I blogging? Passion… blogging gives you the control over what you are able to say about your passion, how often you want to say it and the context of how your message is presented.  If you are not passionate about your topic, it will show.  Your audience will not manifest and people will not come back to read your posts.  Zig Ziglar always said “fake it ’til you make it”, referring to being happy or successful.  This tactic will also work in social media… but only for a while.  If you do not find your passion, your voice will waiver and fail.  Find your passion and stick to it. 

What if your passion wanders?  No problem – the underpinning here is that you have to be true to yourself and you have to let it resonate in your blog content.

Are there pros and cons of one platform over another?  Sure, that question is beyond the scope of this post however.  I know I have the WordPress logo in the bubble, but it can be any blog platform you wish – important is to get the content out there and iterate on the message. 

What else do I need to consider relative to my blog? There are a few more parts of what makes a blog work for you.  My perspective is that unless you have a blog presence, the other aspects of the social media trinity lack the ability to create traction for your brand – without that blog there is just no where stable and consistent to point them.

Related posts:

• The Top 3 Key Apps for Driving Social Media Marketing Traffic – Updating the Trinity
• The Trinity of Social Media Explored Further – Microblogging
• The Trinity of Social Media Explored Still Further – The Social Network