This is the stuff of outtakes,  the stuff that was cut during the editing process and not included in the final released version, but that is nonetheless too great not to share.

A few of my favorite moments:

• Sally Hogshead describing reading in bed (and pointing out the unfortunate mishaps that sometimes happen there)
• Guy Kawasaki’s favorite FAQ about his book, Enchantment
• Practically every scene with the always-classy and (here, anyway) understated David Meerman Scott

Check out the video below, and then check out all the authors who are part of this special MarketingProfs Take 10 Author Series —which also includes NY Times bestselling author Dan Pink—here.

Our quick, actionable Take 10s are one of the many benefits of PRO membership. Upgrade to PRO at 40 percent off with the New Year’s code MOTIVATE.

Jason Keath has a great piece on Instagram over at his place in which he heralds the amazing growth of the mobile-social network. By “mobile-social,” of course, he means a social network in which the majority of activity takes place via mobile devices. Instagram, a photo-sharing social network with location-sharing aspects, and Foursquare, the leading location-sharing social network with photo-sharing aspects, both fit this bill well, Jason writes; they were both created initially as mobile apps. They are mobile-first social platforms, in other words, built not first as website with a mobile app added later (like, for example, Facebook).

What is Instagram? It’s a photo-sharing platform that lets its users take photos, apply filters to their images, tag them with relevant hashtags, geo-locate them, and then share the photos in a heartbeat on the Instagram network. It also allows them to configure their accounts to easily share their photos on other social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Posterous, Flickr, Tumblr, and Foursquare.

Both Instagram and Foursquare are what’s known in some circles by the portmanteau SoLoMo, for SocialLocationMobile, because such platforms offer the capacity to connect with others and share location and social updates via a mobile network.( If I’m being honest, I’ll confess that I don’t really love the term. But I do like what it represents, which is the unique collision of social, local, and mobile media. And that’s a good kind of collision, too. Like the Big Bang—not like a car wreck.)

It’s true: Instagram is growing by leaps and bounds. Its founders announced earlier this month at LeWeb that the platform had passed 14 million users and is growing at rate of 2 million users per month. By comparison, Foursquare—currently with 15 million users—is growing at a rate of .866 million users a month, Jason writes in his piece.

The fact that Instagram is the fastest-growing social mobile network is interesting to me. But what’s more interesting—and a key reason for its appeal and growth, I’m convinced—is not its SoLoMo capabilities, but the way stories are part of the fabric of Instagram. In other words, it’s not about SoLoMo … it’s about SoLoMo-Sto’.

In my view, Instagram’s growth is fueled by the richness of its story platform more than anything else.

Why Marketers Should Pay Attention to Instagram

• Instant content. Instagram, at its core, allows you to tell stories visually, but with a simplicity and immediacy and elegance that’s hard to beat. Snap a photo with your iPhone (for now, the app remains iPhone-only), make it more interesting with one of several filters (or not—#nofilter is a popular hashtag, too), and voila! Instant content.

• But artful content, too. Instagram allows you to create visual stories with an artfulness and elegance and a special kind of gravitas that’s at the heart of good content. As every brand becomes a “publisher” charged with creating content to attract customers, the quality of that content becomes increasingly important.

Creating content that is the soul of your brand—and that communicates your point of view and “voice” in a powerful, emotional way—is key. Instagram is one of the best platforms I’ve seen that puts magic wands into the hands of us Muggles. It gives any one of us the tools necessary to create great stuff—-even if you aren’t much of a photographer.

• Honing your content chops. Or a storyteller, for that matter. I’ve noticed that Instagram allows you to hone your storytelling skills by giving you the necessary—and instant—feedback by how your followers respond (or don’t) to your posts. I’ve learned a lot about what kinds of “stories” resonate in a broader sense—what truly gets my point of view across effectively—just by seeing how my followers there react and what they respond to.

I also like the way that Instagram essentially trains you to look for content and stories almost everywhere. Companies so often fear that they don’t have anything interesting to share. In truth, everyone and every brand has a great font of inspiration right in front of them, if you only train your eye to look for it.

• Personal but universal appeal. A key to a good story from my journalism days is this: Be specific enough to be believable, and universal enough to be relevant. So it is in content. And so it is on Instagram. The images on Instagram are at once intimate and broadly appealing, at once personal and universal. Hence, its popularity.

How Brands Are Responding

Some brands are already tuning into the power of the Instagram platform. (SocialFresh has a list of 23 of them here. Also, check out Instagram’s own “Notable Users Directory,” which includes many brands, celebrities, news outlets and charities.)

I love how Ben & Jerry (“BenandJerrys,” 8,026 followers) is leveraging SoLoMoSto with its Instagram account, where it shares images from its factory in Burlington, Vermont.

At the same time, though, the ice cream maker tells a larger story: Of the beauty of living and doing business in Vermont, of the ski slopes and sunrises, of supporting musicians and local music festivals, and of Ben & Jerry’s significant global presence. “We’re using it to tell our story in a broader way, and get across our point of view” as both a small business and a global player, says Mike Hayes, Integrated Marketing Specialist at Ben & Jerry’s.

Ben & Jerry’s also uses it to recognize and connect with fans, calling out a favorite photo of the week on “fan photo Friday,” Mike says. “We try to love our fans more than they love us.”

General Electric (“GeneralElectric,” 28,042 followers) might be an old-school brand, but it’s using Instagram in innovative ways. In fact, that’s how it sees its broader mission there: Turning innovative GE technology into Instagram art. (If you don’t think energy turbines, engines and generators can be sexy… well, check it out.)

GE is a brand to emulate. It integrates its images there with other GE social channels, and just this week it wrapped up a contest to reward one lucky “Instagrapher” with a trip to the UK that includes a chance to photograph a world-class jet engine facility.

I like how participants didn’t have to photograph GE products to enter, either. Rather, they entered by taking and appropriately tagging photos inspired by the four ways GE works in the world—broadly defined as Moving, Curing, Powering and Building. In other words, GE subtly underscores how its products touch our lives infinitesimally.

At the other end of the spectrum, UK flooring company McKay Flooring (“McKayFlooring”) is brand-new to Instagram (as in, yesterday!), but I’m already in love with its recycled whisky barrel flooring and reclaimed sports flooring. Gorgeous stuff. McKay’s Seamus Murphy has been using Instagram for a while personally, he said in an email, but he launched the McKay business profile for the 40-person company because “it can produce high-quality content fast than can be shared across our spectrum of social media outlets.”

Also, Seamus said, “Our particular business is very visual and a good photograph can say more than any written article … For example, we are having our company Christmas dinner tomorrow at The Corinthian, Glasgow—the first venue that purchased our whisky barrel flooring—and you can expect live Instagram updates as staff members snap and share their photos online.”

I can’t wait to see how McKay integrates Instagram with their other content efforts— which includes a blog, case studies, Twitter and Facebook feed, and so on.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is this: Instagram is, to me, the most interesting social network to come around in a long time. Though I cringe slightly at the SoLoMoSto moniker… as a trend? It thrills me.

Are you on Instagram? Give me a shout below with your ID–I’m @annhandley there.

You can have killer content, for example, but if you haven’t optimized it from both a search and social perspective … well, switch to writing novels and call it a day. Similarly, you can impeccably optimize pages that will bring you boatloads of traffic like Ellis Island once attracted immigrants. But if the content they find on your pages is useless and salesy or your approach is all one-way broadcast, that’s a crying shame. Or you can have a sweet social presence, but without good content to nurture … well, you get my point.

So, I particularly like this infographic from Volinsky Consulting on the Inbound Marketing Ecosystem because it nicely lays out the interconnectedness of content, search, and social in a Lion King/Circle of Life kind of way. (Plus, it throws in marketing automation for good measure.)

Particularly gripping for me is that last point and final takeaway: Leads acquired via this content, search, and social mix cost 62 percent less than your average inbound lead.

Is that overstating things? I don’t think so, but you doubting types can see the research that backs up that claim here. I also love the handy content-tactics chart.

Do I agree with all of this? Not exactly. For example, I don’t know who the 28 percent of companies are that think trade shows have become less important in the last six months, but I’d like to have a stern private word with them. Jeanne Hopkins, VP of Marketing for Hubspot, muses that online strategies are more efficient and less expensive than in-person events. That’s true, but nothing beats face-to-face interaction. I don’t see in-person events and online events as hostile suitemates … but working nicely in tandem. In other words, it’s not either/or—it’s both.

But I digress. The infographic is terrific. So here it is. View. Enjoy.

Created by Volinsky Consulting

They are the people I’ve been grateful for this past year. They enriched my life in some way. They made me laugh. Or maybe we talked or we worked together or we had dinner or I wish I saw more of them or I got to know them on social channels and I decided I liked them (and I’m a notorious people-hater.) (I’m kidding about the hating part.) Anyway—suffice it to say, it runs the gamut.

This would probably be a good time to mention that this list is far from exhaustive: In addition to the folks here, I’m also thankful for the awesome collection of individuals who make up the MarketingProfs family, as well as for my own actual family. I’m also grateful for all of you who bother to swing by here and read MarketingProfs every day. To me, business—and life, for that matter—is all about relationships.

These are all people I’d put in the general category of People Who’ve Made a Difference in My Life of Late (working title), which includes a shout out to the people below. (And Tina Fey. But I can’t find her email address. Working on that.)

So I am grateful for all of these people. And I asked the same question of them. Here are their answers, in no particular order.*

(*I’m lying. Actually, it’s in the order they responded to me.)

Ready for the sharks...

C.C. Chapman, CC-Chapman.com

“I’m thankful for you becoming such a huge part of my life and asking me to write Content Rules with you. (And I really want to see you swim with the sharks.)”

Aaron Strout, head of location-based marketing at WCG

“My list would include WCG—the agency I work for (and love), the book that I co-authored with @schneidermike, Instagram (this feels like my new baby). And all the REAL friends I’ve deepened relationships with this year—including you, Ann!”

Steve Garfield, videoblogger and photographer

“I’m thankful for the ambient intimacy that Instagram enables. It was fun to go to Paris this year and have you in my pocket, liking my photos along the the way.”

David Meerman Scott, online marketing strategist

“I am given the gift of an audience to deliver a talk to somewhere in the world nearly every week. Being able to help others achieve their goals and dreams through my writing and speaking is an honor. I am so thankful that I have been able to build a career doing what I love.”

Steve Woodruff, President, Impactiviti

“I am thankful, above lots of other things, for this.”

Ardath Albee, CEO, Marketing Interactions

“I’m grateful that I have a new concept for a book. I’m thankful that I have wonderful clients unafraid of embracing the new and sometimes crazy-sounding approaches that take them out of their comfort zones. And, my husband cooks! Really well.”

Bob Knorpp, CEO, Cool Beans Group

“As always I’m thankful for people—C.C. and you for chapter 20, Joe Jaffe for his counsel, Bill Green for his advice, Angela Natividad for being someone I can trust with anything, Trace Rutland for her help through a tough year, Alison Gianotto for prodding me to be a better person, Erica Mayer for her inspiration, Kimmy MacDaniel for being a real friend and Judy McCord for teaching me to laugh again.”

Jason Falls, CEO, SocialMediaExplorer.com

“I’m thankful for great friends (like Ann Handley) who not only ask me to help them with their business, but are willing to help me with mine. And while that has a definitive professional angle, it’s just nice to know that the relationships I’ve worked on building over the years can be both personally and professionally satisfying. It’s what networking is all about. It’s pretty special when it works.”

Brian Solis, BrianSolis.com

“I’m thankful for a vibrant and genuine community of smart and engaged people who inspire me to think and act outside of my comfort zone… each and every day. I’m also thankful for events like SXSW, Blogworld, Pivot, and all of the other conferences where everyone comes together, giving me the opportunity to deliver great big hugs as tangible ‘thank you’s.’”

Geoff Livingston, GeoffLivingston.com

“I was honored to organize and manage Give to the Max Day in Greater Washington, give2max.org an online giving day that raised $2 million for 1,200 nonprofits from almost 18,000 donors. A pinnacle moment for me professionally and spiritually. What a gift!”

Constant reminder

Scott Stratten, Unmarketing

“Two great new headshots. I got to go to India to see Gandhi’s final resting place, which inspired my tattoo (it was the quote hanging over his death bed).  I got to speak at the same conference as you. And I no longer do client work—it’s 100% speaking gigs. Booya!”

Cam Balzer, Chief Marketing Officer, Threadless

“I continue to be super grateful every day to be helping artists, designers and doodlers the world over get their weird and wonderful art seen and worn by thousands of people. As a marketer, the most you can ask for is mind-blowing products that do most of the marketing themselves. Being handed those products on a daily basis by our community is pretty humbling and inspiring. We call that ‘Make Great Together!’”

Michael Stelzner, CEO, Social Media Examiner

“I am thankful for Ann Handley. She let me speak at a MarketingProfs conference back in October of 2009. That was the start of Social Media Examiner and 2011 has been our best year ever. Thanks Ann! ”

Jay Baer, President, Convince & Convert

“I am thankful for everyone that chooses—from within a bouillabaisse of content—to read, watch, or listen to a single word I have to say. I am even more thankful that after a verifiably crazy year of travel, effort, and brand-building, I still (evidently) possess the affections of my family, who make it all possible and for whom I started down this path.”

Becky Dilworth (R)

Becky Dilworth, VP of
Digital Strategy,
Bridgeline Digital

“My husband. Why? Because while I was traveling the nation with you (and others) he was doing kindergarten math problems and reading Junie B. Jones books and playing peek-a-boo and changing diapers and trying his damnedest to do his art. And every time I came home he never looked at me with jealousy or contempt. Just joy. My new glasses. Originally I thought they were making me shorter. Turns out I can just see the ground better. A new friend. (You.)”

Mitch Joel, CEO, Twist Image

“I’m thankful for being here. Not to be all doom and gloom, but wars, strife, Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring, the death of people like Steve Jobs… hey, I’m in Marketing and it’s fun. It’s always fun (even when it’s not so fun . Being here: happy and healthy with great family and friends is what makes me thankful and keeps me grounded.”

Kipp Bodnar, Inbound Marketer, Hubspot

“So much to be thankful for in 2011, it rocked. 1. Marketing Sucking Less – Marketers everywhere made huge progress in 2011. 2. The B2B Social Media Book (Wiley 2011) – HUGE thanks to Ann for writing the forward! 3. Intstagram. Seriously, before Instagram my photos sucked.”

Jeanne Hopkins, Director of Marketing, Hubspot

“What I am thankful for: Breathing. Being Happy. Being Loved. Being Liked. Working @HubSpot. Having a great boss like Mike Volpe. Writing a book (Go Mobile) with Jamie Turner. But, most of all being part of a family with twin 13-year-old daughters that are fun to be with and still like to be with their parents.”

Mignon Fogarty, Grammar Girl

“I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to write four books this year to launch my new 101 WORDS book series, and I’m also grateful that I’m finished writing them. I’ll never agree to write four books in one year again!”

Tamsen McMahon, Personal Cartography

“Not to be too cryptic about it, but this year I’m thankful for courage—the courage to believe in the rationality of the outwardly irrational, in the value of happiness, in the promise of love, and in the reward for pursuing what’s right for me and those I love.”

Doug Haslam, Client Services Supervisor, Voce Communications

“I am thankful for the outpouring of friendship from people (you included) after my father’s passing, as well as the 130+ people who donated to my Pan-Mas Challenge ride to help fight cancer. And I don’t have Tina Fey’s email.”

Stephanie Tilton, TenTon Marketing

“Thank goodness for family, friends, and colleagues who inspire me to aim higher, remind me to keep things in perspective, and help me savor life’s unforgettable moments. And I’m so grateful to have spent precious time with our little pug, Munchkin, who left this world far too soon (rest in peace, Munchkin).”

Joe Chernov, Vice President of Content Marketing, Eloqua

“I am grateful that I completed the migration of my frontal lobe to Evernote. I have permanently shifted my long-term memory to the cloud. Here’s to remembering the password. I am also thankful for the ‘Private Session’ setting in Spotify. All of my Facebook friends don’t need to know how much I like Miranda Lambert. Oops!”

Michael Stoner, President, mStoner

“Business: This year, we celebrated a decade in business and hired some terrific staff members. I’m thrilled about two of them in particular: our new marketing manager, Mallory Wood, and our new senior strategist, Susan Evans. They bring new insights and energy to mStoner. Personal: I’m ever more grateful for the community in which I live and the people who make it up. There were some new developments this year (a new coffee shop) that only enhance life and even the destruction from Hurricane Irene pointed out how remarkably people pull together to help each other. It’s a wonderful, rich place to live.”

Maria Pergolino, Director of Marketing, Marketo

“I am thankful to be a marketer in a time when we can accurately prove and predict our impact on revenue. I’m also thankful for all the cool ideas and support from my coworkers, for the ability to work with our Marketo customers, that my boyfriend puts up with my crazy schedule, and for my Monster Beats headphones.”

Jason Falls, Ann Handley, Nick Westergaard

Nick Westergaard,
NickWestergaard.com

“Finding time, while running our small brand strategy firm, to blog and speak more. I started the year with a 52-post resolution (1 post/week) and—knock wood—I am on my way to making that happen. I’ve also been blessed with more time to speak as well. All of this takes time and that’s a challenge with a small business and a big family. I’m grateful that we’ve grown our team so that I can do more of this. That’s helped me make more time for blogging and speaking, which have been very rewarding. Goal for 2012? Submit something to MarketingProfs ”

Scott Brinker, President & CTO, ion interactive, inc.

“I’m grateful for the amazing product development team that has come together here at ion interactive this year, and the exciting growth we’ve had with our landing page management platform, LiveBall. I’m also thankful for the doubling of traffic at my blog, Chief Marketing Technologist. And, of course, a humble thank you to MarketingProfs for the opportunity to contribute articles, seminars, podcast interviews and event sessions this past year.”

Lou Imbriano, Chief Executive Officer, TrinityOne Sports

“I am so grateful for all the wonderful support and kindness I have witnessed and received during the launch of Winning the Customer. It has been humbling to experience the number of folks, that I have never met in person and only through social media, that have come to my side to spread the word about the book in various forms. I just think it is amazing that they insisted in making sure I didn’t stand alone. Thank you all.”

Ron Ploof

Ron Ploof, RonAmok

“I’m thankful that we finally, after more than three-score years, got to work together. And I must say that… ahem… we were great! ”

Deb Ng, Conference Director, BlogWorld and New Media Expo

“I’m grateful to work at a job that not only enables me to be a part of the best gosh darned team out there but one that offers me the opportunity to interact with the most incredible community of creative people. That I was also able to write and have published my first book (and sign the contract for book #2) is the gravy on the proverbial potatoes. 2011 was, without a doubt, the most important year of my career. Finally, the above wouldn’t mean a darn thing if it wasn’t for the love and support of my family and friends, and that love and support trumps everything else.”

Mack Collier, MackCollier.com

“I am grateful for good friends like you, and making tighter connections with a small circle of friends in 2011 versus trying to reach everyone on a very platonic level. In 2012 I am going to spend even more time making deeper connections in a small pool rather than trying to follow everyone loosely in a big ocean.”

Jeffrey Rohrs, VP of Marketing, ExactTarget

“I’m thankful for my wife and kids who are a constant source of love, inspiration, and entertainment. I’m also thankful for friends at work, home, and on the road who prove time and time again that the best form of social media is the face-to-face conversation (usually over drinks).”

Tom Martin, Founder, Converse Digital

Same shirt, same day: Mack Collier & Tom Martin

“TalkingWithTom—what started as a lark just to see if I could, turned out to be the opportunity of a lifetime. I got to meet folks that I’d never have met otherwise, some of whom have turned into friends or at least colleagues. I also got to strengthen relationships with so many others, like the social media sex symbol Ann Handley, because of the interviews or just the seeing each other so more often at conferences. Truly one of the best things I’ve ever dreamt up. So grateful that I did it vs. telling myself all the reasons I should do it.”

Tim Washer, Senior Marketing Manager, Cisco Systems

“I’m grateful for a few comedy gigs: a Super Bowl commercial, Onion Sports Network spot, and a corporate event in Napa Valley.”

C.B. Whittemore, Simple Marketing Now

“I am grateful for the kinship you make possible for so many through MarketingProfs and, more importantly, through you. You are an enabler of ideas and the beauty of magnificent content. Thank you for enabling brilliant yet practical ideas.”

Valeria Maltoni, Valeria Maltoni

“2011 kicked my butt (if I can say so in your post). I’m very grateful to have had the opportunity to confront my enemy, Resistance. The year I had to come out from behind myself and do the real work that is my calling and contribution to the world: a new model for thinking about business. I started Conversation Agent the blog 5+ years ago, and Conversation Agent, the LLC, 3 years ago. This is the year I committed to the task.”

Nancy Duarte, Principal, Duarte Design

Nancy Duarte at the B2B Forum

“Here’s my ditty on 2011: To borrow from Dickens, 2011 was the best of times, it was the worst of times. My husband Mark has been great about getting his ‘old man appointments’ done each year and we were stunned when in June he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and #cancersucks. It’s a creepy feeling hearing the C word when diagnosed in someone you love. Hubby caught it early but it was growing very fast. We’re thankful for a skilled doctor, thankful for cool technology advancements, and for early diagnosis. Mark has been blessed with a full recovery but if we’d missed the diagnosis by even four months, the outcome would be very different. We feel like we’ve had a miracle! On August 1, we celebrated our 30 year wedding anniversary keenly aware of how fragile life is and how deep the vow was we made to love in sickness and in health.”

Sally Hogshead, HowToFascinate.com

“This year I got married, moved into a new home, and gave birth to a website at HowToFascinate.com. I’m grateful for my cocktail mix of caffeine and endorphins.”

Shashi Bellamkonda, Shashi.co

“In 2011 what a year ! Started off in January with my keynote for the Washington Women in PR. The year where many of my friends wrote books (Content Rules included) that I delightedly reviewed. Network Solutions Social Media and I were featured in over nine books. My daughter Mitali started following her footsteps and started blogging on the KikScore blog. Not be left behind, my son’s artwork at home worked its way into Becky McCray’s blog. Of course the highlight was meeting Ann Handley and CC Chapman at Content Marketing World.”

Joe Pulizzi, CEO, Content Marketing Institute

“I’m thankful that: After more than a decade, I’m now seeing marketing departments seriously transform themselves into storytelling factories. The future is now. Content Marketing World rocked the house in 2011, and coming back for more in 2012. Robert Rose helped me put together our new book, Managing Content Marketing, which is, perhaps, the first that tells marketing professionals how to start to set up a content marketing practice within the organization.”

DJ Waldow, Waldow Social

“Starting my own company, Waldow Social. I’ve always wanted to own my own company. Thanks to a phone call on July 1st, I finally got the kick that I needed to make this happen.  I’m also grateful for my new headshot.”

Marcus Nelson, Director of Social Media, Salesforce

“I am grateful for 13 years of marriage, two amazingly creative kids, a baby on the way, and a new home. Also blessed to be working with some of the smartest people in the industry doing a job I take great pride in.”

Jeffrey Cohen, B2B Social Media

“Super-excited for my job as social strategist at Radian6 that I started in 2011. Also pretty psyched about the book that Kipp Bodnar and I wrote about B2B social media.”

Tim Hayden, Chief Marketing Officer, 44Doors

“I’ve been blessed with the birth of Graeme Russell Hayden, my first, on July 10. And, of lesser incredible excitement, the birth of 44Doors, my fourth start-up and the technological realization of all my live-mobile-online visions.”

Dylan Boyd, VP of Growth, Urban Airship

“Very grateful for moving into a new job from email/agency to mobile. Back into the start-up world and loving every minute of the hustle and growth. Amazing to live in dog years and watched our business grow from 6,000 apps to over 31,000 apps using us in less than 10 months. Wild. Excited for 2012 and a vacation soon.”

Erika Napoletano, Chief Redhead, Redhead Writing

“I wake up every day thankful for the people in my life—digitally and physically. They’re the ones who make it possible for me to do what I love every day and remind me that it’s never about me. I’m so incredibly grateful for the constant reminder that it’s rarely EVER about me. My first two books which come out in February and March.”

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

In addition to those listed above, a special Thanksgiving thank-you to people who have inspired me this past year: Lee Odden, Christina CK Kerley, Chris Baggott, Kristina Halvorson,  Amber Naslund, Tom Fishburne, Mike Hayes, Jeremiah Owyang, Matt Ridings, David Armano, Scott Monty, David B. Thomas, Brian Kardon, Shannon Vargo, John Jantsch, Todd Defren, Brian Clark, Michael Brito, Guy Kawasaki and (last but not least) Leigh Durst.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

So how about you…? What are you grateful for?

Homepage image courtesy of BigStock, Happy Child

Traditional PR sticks close to the script, embargoes press releases, follows a prescribed timeline, and all that. But here’s the problem: Conversations careen with such speed and velocity that you need to rethink your approach if you want to be part of them, says David Meerman Scott.

Enter “newsjacking”—a process, as defined by David, “by which you inject your ideas or angles into breaking news, in real time, in order to generate media coverage for yourself or your business.”

Yesterday, David published a new electronic book on the topic, Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage (Wiley) as a kind of field guide to this new approach. It’s stuffed full of examples of people and organizations who have had success with it—from Rick Perry, Oakley, Larry Flynt, and even a B2B company, Amdocs (more on Amdocs in a sec).

Newsjacking is all about telling stories right now—this instant, in real time—so journalists find your content when they are looking for another angle on a story.

I’m a fan of this short book (it’s lightning-fast to read!) for two reasons:

1. I like the way that David’s ideas nudge the marketing and PR industries forward. In an era when every business should be laying content as a cornerstone of its marketing, Newsjacking reminds us that it’s not just any content that will do. Rather, what works is content that’s relevant, interesting, enjoyable, and valuable to your customers. Also, speed matters: You can’t take forever to get your content on the Web (and allow it to get pabulum-ized by lawyers.)

2. I like the way Newsjacking nudges journalists forward. As a former journalist, I have a soft spot in my heart for news reporters and editors, especially as newspapers themselves struggle to survive. I’ve long championed the notion of hiring journalists and writers and editors—you know, people who actually know how to tell a story, because it’s practically in their bones—to help create content from inside organizations.

Newsjacking offers another validation of the idea that so-called “brand journalists” are increasingly important. (And, by the way, I’m moderating a panel on the topic of brand journalism at SXSW ‘12 with a few brand journalists—including Jesse Noyes, Eloqua’s corporate reporter and formerly of the Boston Herald and Boston Business Journal, and Karen Wickre, editorial director at Twitter and formerly of Ziff-Davis and Upside magazine.)

3. Actually, I just thought of a third reason I like Newsjacking. It underscores the importance of a good title.

David and I chatted over the weekend:

AH: What is “newsjacking”?

DMS: As journalists scramble to cover breaking news, the basic facts—who/what/when/where—are often fairly easy to find, either on a corporate website or in competitors’ copy. That’s what goes in the first paragraph of any news story.

The challenge for reporters is to get the “why” and the implications of the event. Why is the company closing its plant? The corporate website may offer some bogus excuse like “because it wants to spend more time with its family.” Competitors may quote some expert’s speculation on the real reason, but a reporter can’t cite that without adding something self-demeaning like “according to an expert quoted in the New York Times.” Journalists need original content—and fast.

All this is what goes in the second paragraph and subsequent paragraphs. That’s why the newsjacker’s goal is to own the second paragraph.

If you are clever enough to react to breaking news very quickly, providing credible second-paragraph content in a blog post, tweet, or media alert that features the keyword of the moment, you may be rewarded with a bonanza of media attention.

AH: Can any company newsjack? Like a B2B company?

DMS: Yes. In late 2010, officials from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) were holed up in meetings to discuss the issue of bill shock, the surprise consumers experience when they receive a mobile phone bill with charges much higher than expected. As the meeting was taking place, Jeff Barak of Amdocs, a company that provides customer care, billing, and order-management systems for telecommunications carriers and Internet service providers, posted a commentary headed No need to be (bill) shocked on the Amdocs company blog. Barak argued that mobile phone companies have an interest in working with customers to avoid bill shock because customer loyalty is vital in a highly competitive market.

This clever newsjacking tactic worked because journalists interested in legislation that might emerge from the FCC meetings were eagerly looking for content via Google Alerts. So, they instantly found the Amdocs commentary.

Amdocs was quickly rewarded when the Penton Media publication Connected Planet devoted an entire blog post to Amdocs’ thesis. Several other industry publications followed up with stories of their own.

AH: What’s the key to newsjacking success?

DMS: You’ve got to be quick.

Real-time communication is antithetical to the mega-corporate paradigm in which any message should reflect a consensus that’s emerged from an extensive process. That might have worked back when public discourse was essentially a corporate monologue. It surely does not work in the age of social media, round-the-clock news, and newsjacking.

I recommend drawing up a formal mandate—signed off by senior management, the PR department, and the legal department—that sets out rules of engagement in the same way that military commanders are empowered.

This mandate should give select frontline staff the freedom and flexibility to write a blog post or send a media alert when the time is right. That might be late at night or on a weekend or in the middle of a holiday.

To successfully newsjack—or fend off a newsjack—you can’t wait for approval. You just have to do it.

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Catch Eloqua’s Joe Chernov on how to find and work with brand journalists in his class, The Elements of Style: Hiring a Brand Journalist as part of  MarketingProfs University’s Content Marketing Crash Course running now through November 18. The 11-class course is designed to make you a better content marketer in just two weeks. You can also access all sessions On Demand.

As I define it, Frankenspeak is convoluted text that doesn’t sound like it was penned by a human, but instead sounds like it was created in a lab.

Sometimes, it reads like someone bolted on words to create a terrifying  string of nonsense (“our mission-critical, scalable, high-performance, unparalleled, game-changing solution”) or bloated bit of buzzwords (“We have assembled surgical and clinical expertise second to none, have a state-of-the-art trauma center, developed sophisticated minimally invasive techniques, and called on innovative training and technology to ensure the highest level of patient safety and quality of care,” as my friend David Meerman Scott wrote about recently.) Either way, it’s sales-y language and useless marketing hype.

In Content Rules, C.C. Chapman and I wrote about the words and phrases that we’d like to ban from marketing, sales, corporate communications, business schools, blogs and boardrooms. But since today is a day to celebrate the scary, here are 10 of the most frightening:

1. Impactful. Ugh. This is a truly scary word that many people in business and education like to toss around to describe things that make an impact. But the word does not appear in most dictionaries and, if it does, should be banished.  Instead try: “influential” or “substantial.” “Powerful” is good, too.

2. Leverage. This word is the poster child of words that began life as nouns and (perplexingly) find themselves used as verbs. Instead try: (depending on the intended meaning) “influence,” “exploit,” “enhance,” “rely on,” or just plain “use.”

3. Synergy. Also: Synergistic Synergism. Synergize. (And while we are on it, let’s add all most words that end in “-ize” too: “incentivize,” “productize,” “monetize,” “budgetize,” “utilize,” “socialize,” “operationalize,” and (wait for it!) “calenderize,” which I actually heard someone use the other day. And yes, she had a perfectly straight face. Instead try: finding a word that doesn’t sound like it was first uttered by the robot.

4. Revolutionary or Innovative. People often use these terms in business to describe things that really aren’t. Unless you just invented an escalator to Pluto, don’t use them.

5. Email blast. Businesses often use this phrase to describe an offer they’ve emailed to their subscriber list. The problem is that it suggests disrespect. Are you a spammer? Then you’ve “blasted.” Legitimate businesses mailing a legitimate offer to an opt-in subscriber list? Not so much. Instead try: How about “sent”?

6. Proactive. The opposite of “reactive.” I understand that businesses want to seem like they’re reacting to issues even before they occur. But I think this word just sounds pompous and should be avoided in business. Instead try: depending on the intended meaning, “foresee” or “anticipate.”

7. Solution. Another favorite. Business people often use this word to describe or product or service they can’t otherwise explain. What’s wrong with “product” or “service”?

8. Words that individually are harmless, but mashed together become horrid: Buy-in. Mission-critical. Dial-in. Best-of-breed. End-to-end. Value-add. Next-generation. Game-changing. Face-time. Push-back. Net-net. Win-win. And low-hanging (as it applies to “fruit” when you aren’t talking about an actual tree or orchard).

9. Ridiculous phrases. There are a kajillion of these corporate-speak silly phrases: Run it up the flagpole. Eat your own dogfood. Out of pocket. At the end of the day. Peel the onion. Peel the grape. Open the kimono. Open the kimono at the end of the day while you are peeling an onion.

10. Finally, here are two more I dislike: “Nazi” when applied to business concepts (as in “brand Nazi”) or “drinking the Kool-Aid” as applied to accepting ideas or concepts (sometimes, without understanding). Since these two phrases are rooted in unfortunate and regrettable events in history, using them seems offensive or (at the very least) in bad taste.

Some people find today very stimulating:

So what about you? What business words do you think we should celebrate today?

If you want to create content that doesn’t sound monstrous, join us for MarketingProfs U Content Marketing Crash Course. Instructors Nancy Duarte, Jason Falls, Joe Pulizzi, Jay Baer, Joe Chernov, Marcus Sheridan, Mack Collier, Ardath Albee, Erika Napolitano (and many more — including me!) will set you straight on how to create and share compelling content that will take your business to a whole new level. Seats are going fast; register here!

Sometimes, I get a little fed up with this whole “every company is a publisher” business. The truth is that some companies just don’t have the chops for it.

So, you shouldn’t even think about producing content as a cornerstone of your marketing if …

1. You’ve uttered the sentiment “Why would they buy the cow if we’re giving the milk for free?”

Some companies worry that by creating content and sharing it freely, they are giving away their thought leadership or trade secrets. They worry that their competitors are trolling their blog and gaining valuable insights or (worse!) poaching clients from the comment threads.

In other words, a Certified Public Accountant, say, might worry that a blog post decoding some new FASB rule for the small-business owner might result in potential clients’ deciding they can handle their taxes on their own this year.

Of course, the truth is that giving away free content to your prospective clients and customers will do a few things, but none of those things will dissuade the purchase of any metaphorical milk. Rather, educating prospects about the products you sell and underscoring your own expertise actually increases your credibility and fosters trust (along with traffic). You show that you know what you’re talking about, and those who dig your stuff will become more educated and ready leads for sales.

And anyway, the kind of clients who are inclined to do their own taxes (so to speak) would never buy accounting services. Just sayin’.

2. You’re starting a blog because the CEO always wanted to be a writer.

This is a tricky one, because getting executive buy-in for a content program is critical. And a CEO blog might well be a good thing for your company, and it’s cool that the CEO is all for it.

But for the love of Mike, please don’t start with this reason. Rather, take a step back and ask some broader questions:

Why are we going to create what we want to create? What are our goals? What do we hope to accomplish?
That sounds obvious, right? But it’s a critical, fundamental step that most companies completely miss. They start a blog because the CEO wants one, or they launch a Twitter stream because their competitors are there. They jump right to tools and tactics, without any sense of the strategy behind the tactics.

So, first answer that Why question—and perhaps later incorporate the CEO’s voice in a blog that’s founded on a stronger footing, for far more compelling reasons. Doing so is going to be a handy chisel to have at your workbench when the CEO gets bored or too busy to pen posts consistently.

3. You think there’s already too much stuff out there, and creating more content is just creating more noise.

Well, that’s true. Google Chairman and former CEO Eric Schmidt has been quoted as saying that every two days there’s as much information created as since the dawn of civilization to 2003. That’s a lot of stuff, right?

It is. But that’s why the quality of your content is so critical. That’s where telling your story well becomes so important. As Eric points out, we are flooded with content on a regular basis. So the stuff that cuts through is the stuff that’s truly awesome. Companies that simply repost their press releases on their blogs and then wonder why they don’t get any comments aren’t the ones that are going to succeed.

Of course, content that “cuts through” isn’t content that’s “viral.” (It might be, but “viral” is serendipitous and rarely the result of strategy.) Rather, content that “cuts through” is content that (as Len Stein says) is “packed with utility, seeded with inspiration, and is honestly empathetic.” Content that meets the needs of your customers in whatever way resonates best with them. In other words: How can you help your customers and prospects with your content?

4. You own the Yellow Pages.

You’re right. Forget it.

5. You’re sick of all the blather by so-called Content Gurus about blogs and e-books and the YouTubes and blah blah blah: What, did they invent words or something?

Actually, this is a trick, because you, in fact, should be sick of all the blather by so-called Content Marketers and Content Strategists and the like who act as if content just sprouted legs and is walking upright on land for the first time ever.

As I’ve written before, content as a marketing asset is nothing new: In 1900, tire-manufacturer Michelin began producing the Michelin Guide to help drivers maintain their cars and find decent lodging and great food while touring France. Jell-O’s recipe books helped push Jell-O sales to $1 million—a fortune in 1906. Though the smartest content marketers and strategists understand that this an exciting time for content, they know that they didn’t exactly birth it. (Check out this slide show on the history of content marketing for more on that idea.)

But there are several reasons why content is suddenly new again, among them:

First, that technology thing: We now have the tools to create content platforms easily and cheaply. (Notice I didn’t say “content” but did say “content platforms”—like blogs and eBooks and tablet apps and audio and webinars and video, and the entire content kitchen sink, so to speak!)

Second, this social media thing: The rise of social media tools and platforms means that your customers and prospects are connected to each other and you in unprecedented ways.

And finally, the Google thing: Your customers are searching online for you along with the products and services you sell.

Those three things mean that a new model is emerging for brands. Brands have become media properties, certainly. But it’s more than that … if you allow yourself to really think about it more deeply. What we have is a new model, one of the exciting and interesting opportunities that allows for true innovation.

To do what? To mine the stories from within our organizations and bring them brilliantly to light. To bond with customers in collaborative ways. To put some flesh on the bones of a company in a way that’s human and connective, rather than dry and corporate.

To have some fun. To do something unexpected. To be original. To show how our products and services live in the world … how they solve problems, help people do their jobs better, improve their lives, or make them smarter, wittier, better-looking, taller, better networked, cooler, more enlightened, and with better backhands, tighter asses, and cuter kids.

To me, “content” doesn’t just mean stuff we create. It means creating unprecedented opportunity.

Or not. It all depends on your perspective.

Check out the Grande Guide in all its glory or view more documents from Eloqua.

You might say it’s good branding that the term “no bullshit” conjures up, for me, Jason Falls. But actually, it’s just the truth.

Which is why I want to tell you about three things Fallsian. One in print, one in person, and one online:

1. His brand-new book. No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing (Pearson 2011). I haven’t read it yet, because Jason apparently couldn’t be bothered to mail me a review copy and inscribe something sweetly gratuitous in it … Nonetheless, I’m really looking forward to it.

(I’m kidding, by the way. I actually ordered it from Amazon and am waiting for it to arrive in the same drooling, fevered state with which my spaniel anticipates his daily harassment of the UPS delivery guy. Anyway, Jason would never inscribe gratuitously—see the first paragraph.)

I am already feeling inclined to like No Bullshit Social Media. Why? Because the best kind of content is the kind that speaks directly and honestly, and clearly Jason and Erik do:

“Social Media is no longer about chatting with your friends. It’s about driving business. …. The book disproves the myths and knocks down the excuses, and shows you the biggest reason why your business needs social media: because you want to make money.

“The book is not about ‘ROI’ though. It’s about what you’re going to get out of it in real, practical terms.”

(“Real” and “practical,” by the way, are another way of saying “no bullshit,” although the title would be less compelling if they called the book “Real and Practical Social Media.” Of course, the most delicate among you might disagree, saying that the title is unnecessarily crass and even a smidge offensive. I can’t say you don’t have a point; it’s definitely a title that takes risks. But in my professional opinion as a long-time writer and editor of business content, it was a risk worth taking.)

2. His workshop in my hometown. Specifically, the one he’s organizing with Awareness next month. It’s a day of “No BS” intensive learning on Monday, October 17, featuring Altimeter Group analyst Jeremiah Owyang, Shift Communications principal Todd Defren, Location-Based Marketing for Dummies co-author Mike Schneider, social media marketing expert DJ Waldow and Social Fresh founder Jason Keath along with me and C.C. Chapman, my Content Rules wubby. (You can see a quick video C.C. and I did with Jason here.) Because Jason is a FOMP (Friend of MarketingProfs), he’s generously offered a $75 discount to MarketingProfs readers (use the code MPROFSVIP) if you can make it.

3. MarketingProfs U Content Marketing Crash Course. OK, so Jason is only a small part of the amazing 14-class course that is the November MarketingProfs U Content Marketing Crash Course, which includes the likes of Nancy Duarte, Jay Baer, Erika Napoletano, Ardath Albee, Mack Collier, Joe Pulizzi and a bunch of other smarty pants (oh, and me). Jason will give a blueprint for how to plan, launch, and measure your content efforts. If you’re someone who is charged with planning, executing, and measuring a content plan for your company, this course will suit your needs nicely. It takes place November 3-18. See the full list of classes and the all-star lineup.

See you at these two events, I hope!

I hadn’t the foggiest notion of what she meant by that until years later, when I realized that my typical over-the-top over-excitement usually did precipitate a crash of some kind. In other words, I pretty much would cry before the night was over!

Last week, C.C. Chapman and I spoke at the incredibly well-run first-ever Content Marketing World in Cleveland. Joe Pulizzi and his team spent 11 months organizing the event, which drew more than 600+ attendees from something like 18 countries.

The event itself was phenomenal. For someone like me, it was a dream audience: Everyone was there united in their love of content, extolling its virtues, and excited about its future. There was a lot of cheerleading for the bright and shiny new awesomeness that is Content Marketing. It was incredible—a Content love-in! But still, I couldn’t shake some undefined gnawing feeling …

Later, I put my finger on it: I imagine that a lot of those 600+ attendees went back to their homes and offices all fired up to wave their pencils over some blank pages and conjure up some Content that would magically drive business to them. Then I imagine that they’ll realize what hard work and a long-term commitment (not just a one-and-done campaign) Content is. They’ll think that they don’t have much of a story to tell after all (because maybe they are a B2B company that sells something necessary but inherently boring) and that the CEO won’t give them any budget because why would they buy the cow if we are giving the milk for free? And then sobering reality sets in: Someone is gonna cry before the night is over.

Does that sound negative? Like I’m a water-sopped, heavy wool blanket smothering the Content-love-fest?

Actually, I don’t think so.

The truth is that I do believe—deeply—in the power of Content. But at the same time, it’s important to keep things in perspective. I worry that the current breathless cheering and hearty slaps to Content’s back ignores its already rich and storied past as a key part of Marketing. I worry that the hype will undercut its solid foundation when more sobering realities of Content come to light and strangle what’s an exciting and important evolution in Marketing. But most of all, I worry that folks won’t really take the time to support Content fully in their organizations—because full support is what it takes to succeed.

Content isn’t just another channel. It’s a mindset.

It’s not new, but instead, technology and social tools and platforms have created new opportunities, which continue to evolve, and afford us new ways to respond to customers and communicate with them.

In other words, what we now have isn’t just more text or pixels, but a new model entirely: one of exciting and interesting opportunities that allows for true innovation. To me, Content doesn’t just mean stuff we create. It means creating unprecedented opportunity.

To do what? To mine the stories from within our organizations and bring them brilliantly to light. To bond with customers in collaborative ways. To put some flesh on the bones of a company in a way that’s human and connective, rather than dry and corporate.

To have some fun. To do something unexpected. To be original. To show how our products and services live in the world … how they solve problems, help people do their jobs better, improve their lives, or make them smarter, wittier, better-looking, taller, better networked, cooler, more enlightened, and with better backhands, tighter asses, and cuter kids.

So in the talk C.C. and I gave, we tried to impart a small dose of reality. Yes, Content is awesome. It absolutely can (and should!) drive business.

But it’s not a magic bullet. (Is anything, really, outside of comic books?) And while there are reasons why Content is suddenly front and center for marketers (and why a conference based entirely on it can sell out in Cleveland and why the best-selling Content Rules is already in its second printing and headed into paperback next spring), it’s good to remember that Content as a business asset is nothing new. But at the same time, it’s a major shift that requires a corresponding shift in thinking.

In 1900, tire-manufacturer Michelin began producing the Michelin Guide to help drivers maintain their cars and find decent lodging and great food while touring France. Jell-O’s recipe books helped push Jell-O sales to $1 million—a fortune in 1906. MarketingProfs ran a slide show about this a few weeks ago. And Joe and his team know this well, which is why they opened the Cleveland event with this video they produced that put Content into its proper context.

Clearly, a lot of people are suddenly embracing the power of blogs and e-books and the YouTubes and so on … But the smartest content marketers and strategists understand that while this an exciting time for Content, they didn’t exactly invent it.

Content isn’t the new kid on the block at all. Instead, Content is an old friend who has had our back for a long, long time. Now, its future is up to us.

Did I mention she’s a hardcore Facebook user? Who doesn’t see the value in yet another social network? Who doesn’t get the point of why she should care? In terms of her skepticism, she was worse than the most hard-shelled CEO.

Google+ is the new kid on the block, of course. What’s the skinny for marketers? We offered some thoughts on that here.

Also, check out this video. It tells the the story of Google+ cleanly and simply, and I think sums it up nicely for anyone … be they 14 or 40. To put this video in some context, here are Google+ usage numbers from Experian Hitwise, for the week ending July 23:

• Google+ received more than 1.79M total visits the week ending July 23, 2011—a decrease of 3% vs. the previous week (July 16). The site received 1.86M total visits the previous week.
• The average time spent on the site was down as well by 10% from 5 minutes and 50 seconds to 5 minutes and 15 seconds.
• Among the top 50 Upstream sites, 59% of Upstream traffic to Google+ last week came from other Google properties. Google.com accounted for 37% of Upstream traffic to the site. Gmail accounted 15.59%, a 9% increase from previous week.
• 40% of Upstream traffic to Google+ last week came from Search Engines (8% increase). Email provided the 2nd largest amount of Upstream traffic accounting for 19%.
• 59% of visits to Google+ are from males, that is a 4% increase from previous week (4 weeks ending July 23).
• Among age demos, 33% of visits are from users age 25 to 34.

Brands aren’t actually allowed on Google+ yet, but some (like Ford Motor Company) are already anticipating it. So—shiny new toy or significant new social network? Or both? You decide:

Want to learn more about all aspects of social media and how they’ll help to grow and strengthen your marketing efforts?  Check out MarketingProfs University’s course Social Media Marketing Fast Track:  a 17-class course available on-demand now!  Receive $354 in free course bonuses when you register today!

At least, that’s my perspective, as applies to almost anything. And that’s why I’m a fan of Michael Stelzner’s new book, Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition (Wiley, 2011). Like many of my favorite marketers, Michael is a doer: He doesn’t just posit some great ideas on how to grow a business. Instead, he’s been there, done that. In other words, he’s practiced them.

By way of background: Michael is the founder of Social Media Examiner, a site that helps small businesses navigate social media. In less than 18 months, SocialMediaExaminer.com grew from infancy to more than 80,000 subscribers. Prior to Launch, he authored Writing White Papers: How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged.

Here, Michael and I chat about how to build a loyal fan base without the hard sell and the lessons he learned from Social Media Examiner as they apply to almost any company doing business online. As it happens, the growth primarily involves one of my most favorite things. (Hint: It starts with “con” and ends with “tent.”)

Ann: Let’s talk about how social media has changed the way businesses need to market online.

Michael: The change has been radical. And this means many businesses need to unlearn the practices of yesterday. No longer can marketers treat people like fish. Terms like “bait pieces” and “acquisition” are words that should banned from our vocabulary.

Unfortunately, too many of us have been taught that marketing is about an exchange. I (the marketer) give you something, and you (the prospect) reciprocate. This “give to get” mantra is manipulative, and frankly, people are fed up with it.

There’s a reason most people don’t trust businesses. And marketing has a lot to do with it. It’s as if marketers have fired everything they’ve got at people. As marketing messages come raining down, people are seeking refuge from the storm. They’ve tuned out.

Plus, social media has changed everything. To paraphrase Guy Kawasaki, power has shifted to “nobodies from nowhere.” Now everyday Joes and Janes are letting their voices be heard with blogs, on Facebook, via Twitter and on YouTube. And here’s what they’re saying:

• “We want access to great insight and people!”
• “Recognize me.”
• “I want it all for free!”

Smart marketers have figured out how to give people precisely what they want with the highly scalable power of content.

Ann: And content cuts through the noise.

Michael: First, let me clarify that not all content is created equal. What people don’t want are details about why they should buy from your business. What I discovered is most people could care less about me and my products. I found this out the hard way.

But, what people do want is detailed “how to” information, success stories, and expert interviews. This type of content meets their insatiable appetite for free guidance and assistance.

For example, at Social Media Examiner, we go to trade shows and interview experts like Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, and Mari Smith. Our audience love’s hearing golden nuggets from the creative minds of these pros. And sometimes, those experts share our content with their fan base.

The beauty of great content is it’s highly scalable and sharable. When people share your content on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter … that drives back more qualified traffic to you.

Ann: You talk about businesses as, essentially, “publishers.” (Which is something I also espouse!) But what do you say to people who say that they aren’t in the business of producing “content”? In other words, how can they produce all the various kinds of stuff you talk about in Launch, in addition to adding outside voices to the mix?

Michael: If you’re not in the business of producing content then you’ll be reliant on others that do. Everywhere you place an advertisement is the content business: Google, radio, TV, and print. If you want to remain reliant on them for costly marketing … then don’t produce content.

But, if you want to own your own platform and eliminate the outrageous costs of marketing, then you need a content strategy.

Ann: I like the creative formula you developed to show the power of content. You call it the “elevation principle.”

Michael: It’s really a simple concept. If you focus on the needs of people, your business will achieve forward momentum. If you think of your business like a rocket ship, your goal as a marketer is to navigate it to new frontiers.

Here’s the elevation principle formula: Great content plus other people minus marketing messages equals growth.

You know what great content is. It’s those in-depth articles that provide precisely what your readers need.

The second part—other people—is overlooked by most businesses. This involves reaching out to experts in your field and sharing all that great knowledge in their minds.

The last part of the elevation principle involves removing the marketing messages from your content. Marketing is like friction for your rocket ship, the more you use it, the less people will receive your content as a gift.

Have you ever been to a wedding sponsored by Nike? If you received a gift that forced you to first watch a commercial, what would you think? Of course these would be absurd! If you hate being pitched to, so do your customers and prospects. Pack away those marketing messages and people will receive you and your message with open arms.

Ann: You discuss two types of content. Can you talk about what they are and how business can use them?

Michael: First there’s primary fuel. This is like gasoline for your business. It has about a 72-hour shelf life and includes the content you regularly produce for your business.

Ann: Like?

Michael: Like articles, reviews, case studies and expert interviews that all focus on the needs of your readers.This is important because it gives people a reason to keep coming back for more.

Nuclear fuel is more complicated, yet more powerful. Able to attract many more people, this type of content has a much longer tail – reports, maybe, or contests.

Ann: Can you give me a specific example of what nuclear fuel can do?

Michael: Sure. We release an annual report called the Social Media Marketing Industry Report—a free 40+ page study that examines the state of social media. We survey thousands and produce this rich report that we give away for free—without any registration requirement.

The results: We typically get at least 40,000 people reading the report within the first month and rank very high in the search engines.

Primary fuel is your everyday content that gets people coming back and nuclear fuel is that special content you use when you need to launch something.

Ann: What’s the role of a blog in an ongoing content publishing program?

Michael: When I interviewed Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra two years ago, he told me that the word blog has changed and morphed. Everyone is producing content. It happens to be that blogs are the platform or the technology. In reality, I see the word blog going away. We at Social Media Examiner call ourselves an online magazine because people know what that means.

But, fundamentally it’s blogs that have enabled all of us to become publishers. God bless the folks behind WordPress. It’s changed my life.

Ann: If businesses should provide commercial-free content, what’s your perspective on how do they ultimately sell and make money? (I get this question a lot.)

Michael: That’s a wonderful question. The answer is to use what I call backchannels. If you can keep your primary channel (for example, your blog), free of commercials, people will receive your content as a gift and share it widely.

As more people visit your site, some of them will want to come back for more. If you can provide a way for people to subscribe to updates from your site, this creates a secondary channel. Once people have opted in to receive your updates, you can promote via this backchannel.

This keeps your primary channel (that all important first impression) free of ads. It also helps you build a list and loyal following that you can continue to feed with your content (and occasionally market to).

Pick up a free chapter of Michael’s new book here.

Want to apply the same strategy used to launch Social Media Examiner to your own marketing efforts? Learn how on Thursday, August 11 (or later on-demand) as Michael Stelzner breaks down the steps in the PRO seminar, How to Rapidly Grow Your Business by NOT Marketing. Special bonus: 10 live seminar attendees will receive a free copy of Michael’s new book, Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition.

The survey itself should only take a mere 5 (or so) minutes. If you include your email address, we’ll share the survey results as soon as they’re ready so you can see how you measure up. (If you do, we won’t add your email address to a list or pass it on to anyone else. Promise.)

Need that link again?

Take the survey here.

And from me: A big, giant … THANK YOU.

To wit, no sooner does the AP Stylebook get the whole e-mail vs. email business sorted out than it is forced to confront a whole new set of thorny issues: Is unfollow a legitimate word? Must we really embrace retweet? Is tagging confined to a children’s playground game or cattle ranching? Or does it have new depth and meaning in our social world?

In the newly revised 2011 print edition of its venerable guidebook, the AP included some brand new social media and technology terms. Like unfollow and retweet. But also geolocation, geotagging, stream, unfriend, and unfollow. Fittingly, they announced the additions via Twitter.

The new entries joined a set of other terms the AP added this past March to the online edition of its Stylebook. (That’s when they officially pitched a tent in the email camp, thus swiftly dashing e-mail’s ambition and dreams.) They also added smartphone (no hyphen) and swapped Kolkata for the retired Calcutta. In other words, if you are planning to send an e-mail to Calcutta via your smart phone, you need to rethink things.

The social section was one of two sections newly updated, by the way. The second was the food section, which now includes something called huitlacoche.

Apparently it’s a fungus that grows on corn. With a smoky-sweet flavor, it’s considered a delicacy of Mexican cuisine. But all I could think of was the discussion in the test kitchen: “You taste it!” “No—you!”

Here are the new words added to the social media guidelines section.

check in (v.), check-in (n. and adj.)
Action associated with location-based social networking tools.

download
To get information from another server or computer.

end user (n.), end-user (adj.)
A phrase commonly referred to by technology developers when imagining the audience for an application, software, or hardware. End-user experience.

Foursquare
A location-based service.

geolocation
The association of your virtual location with your physical location. Many social networks have enabled geolocation features (Facebook Places is one example), and some are built completely around geolocation (Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt).

geotagging
The act of adding geographical metadata to pieces of media or social media updates. A geotagged photo would indicate the latitude and longitude of the location the photo was taken. A geotagged tweet would also indicate latitude and longitude, or a more general location, for example, Carolina Beach, N.C.

Gowalla
A location-based service.

Internet-connected TV
A television set that can be connected directly to the Internet and can display Web content without going through a computer.

iPad
A touch-screen computer that can be connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi or cellular data networks. Use IPad when the word starts a sentence or headline. Use the generic tablet unless specifically referring to the iPad.

link shortener
Tools that allow users to shorten a longer URL to make it easier to share. Bit.ly and TinyURL are two link shorteners.

mention
On Twitter, an @mention tags an account in a tweet someone else is publishing. It often appears in place of the actual name. Example: I refer to the @APStylebook as I edit stories.

reply
On Twitter, an @reply is a common technique to speak to other people directly. A tweet that begins with @username can only be seen by people that follow both parties, though it can still be viewed on an individual’s profile page. Example: @APStylebook I have a style question that I need help with.

social media optimization
Any of a number of methods, mostly informal, used to ensure that online content is shared on social networks, thus increasing click-through traffic to the originating website. SMO is acceptable on second reference

stream
A method of processing and delivering media in real time over the Internet. Videos on YouTube are an example of streaming content, as are many on-demand services like Netflix and Hulu.

tablet computer
A touch-screen computer that can be connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi or cellular data networks.

tag
To identify someone or something in a post someone else is publishing. Photos are often tagged to identify people and objects in them.

Tumblr
A blogging platform.

unfollow
To remove an account from the list of accounts that populate a feed, usually on Twitter. Note that unfollowing on Twitter is a one-way action: I may unfollow you, but you may continue to follow me.

user interface
The features of a device, program or website that enable control by a human. UI is acceptable on second reference.

WAP
Wireless Application Protocol. A standard that allows users to access information on mobile devices. Sometimes referred to as a WAP-optimized website, or a WAP browser. WAP is acceptable on second reference.

* * * * *
So what would you say? Are these words you would have included in your own Stylebook? Are there others?

Thanks to our own Jo Roberts for the blog fodder!

So much about traveling is fun. In Atlanta, I finally connected in person with Elizabeth Fairleigh, who somehow managed to pull it together to attend a breakfast talk even though a freak storm had knocked out electricity at her house. In Dallas, I met longtime MarketingProfs fan Jeff Corkran, and in San Francisco, I saw Kiki Mills, met Aprimo’s Paige O’Neill, and the Zoomerang gang (hi, Jason!), and—in the Marriott Marquis San Francisco lobby—bumped into Lee Odden. Seeing Lee was an unexpected surprise: It felt like finding a hundred-dollar bill on the sidewalk. Orange Country was a two-fer: I had dinner with my childhood homey Ron Ploof ; then, the next day, I saw a passel of MarketingProfs colleagues all in one place at the same time—a rare occurrence for our virtual company. Actually, a three-fer: I had a “preunion” with Eric Bratt.

I also had a ton of fun palling around with Becki Dilworth and Alexa Stabile, who morphed over those 10 weeks from mere friends to my new work sister-wives.

But, at the same time, traveling is also a bitch. Setting aside for a minute that I hate to fly (and I do hate flying, with a special kind of passion you might otherwise reserve for getting a root canal), it’s also stressful to be away from your family, out of your routine, sleeping in a strange bed and then forgetting—when you wake up—exactly what city you’re in.

Here are a few tricks I learned in the past few months about how to make travel a little less stressful:

1. Leave a little extra room in the suitcase. Pack sparingly—resist the urge to over-pack. For me, this means I consciously have to curb my tendency to bring too many pairs of shoes. I get by with two: one dress and one casual.

Not over-packing cuts down on the amount of stuff you’re lugging, of course. But it also affords some room to bring back that special something you saw in Philly, to accommodate the outfit you had to unexpectedly buy in Atlanta when jeans at dinner suddenly didn’t cut it, or to accept the bottle of Puerto Rican rum that someone—in this case, Raúl J. Colón—schlepped all the way from Santa Isabel. (Thanks, Raúl!)

2. Take on-location photos. I’m not talking about site-seeing photos here. I’m talking about practical photos that help orient you. Between the book tour and other events and travel, I stayed in 26 different hotels in the past few months. After about the fifth or sixth, I started forgetting my room number. One time, in fact, I tried my room key on Room 1035 with repeated aggression (Stupid! Magnetic! Strip!) only to realize that Room 1035 was in New York, and here I was in Chicago. Duh.

It was then that I started snapping a photo of my room number with my phone and keeping it handy so I could refer to it and navigate my way back to my room without pounding on a stranger’s door.

It’s also a good strategy for remembering where you parked, including in the airport parking garage.

3. Check luggage. I’m not really sure why checking luggage is anathema to so many people. What’s the big deal of what generally amounts to an extra 10 minutes hanging around baggage claim?

For me, it’s a whole lot less stressful to check luggage than it is to (a) worry about banned liquid contraband in the carry-on (because my favorite products never come in trial-size), and (b) compete for overhead bin space with every other traveler on the plane (and fret about boarding early enough to secure said space).

Plus, one time I tried to make a connection in O’Hare that was in a different terminal. The sprint was fruitless—I didn’t make it—and to this day, I blame the fact that I was lugging a 17-inch laptop strapped to my back and dragging a roller-bag that felt within minutes like I was the ball carrier on some PBA tour.

So go ahead and hate, but from now on … I check. I know plenty of people have had horrific experiences with lost or damaged luggage; feel free to dissuade me of this practice in the comments. (All that said, I suggest you carry your house and car keys in a carry-on. Just in case.)

4. Never fly through O’Hare. That airport is insane; it should be renamed Ringling Brothers and Barnum O’Hare. See above.

5. Spring for TripIt. TripIt is an extremely useful trip planner that keeps all of your travel plans in one spot. The mobile app seriously rocks. It’s like having a super-organized travel elf take care of all those annoying little details and reminding you to check in for a impending flight, notifying you when flights are delayed, when gates change (and to where!) and so on. In other words, it thinks about that stuff—so I don’t have to. It’s a no-brainer to upgrade to TripIt Pro. It’s $49 a year, but I’d exchange my right arm for it. (Hat tip to C.C. Chapman for this one.)

6. Get a travel wallet. My friend Beccy gave me a special billfold before we flew to London this past February. It’s meant to hold a passport, but even when I fly domestically, I now use it as a “travel wallet” to keep myself organized, without carrying all the other stuff in my usual wallet. It’s big enough to hold boarding passes, luggage slips, receipts, and the rest; it’s also where I store airline and hotel loyalty cards so I have them handy. The receipt thing is key, at least for me. It saves me a lot of aggravation after the trip because I don’t have to cull receipts from various pockets, bags, and other nooks and crannies that I otherwise tend to haphazardly tuck receipts in.

7. Don’t unpack. After forever “losing” stuff in the hotel room, I devised this rule: Resist the urge to make your hotel room feel like “home” by spreading your stuff and other comfort objects around. It’s not home—you both know that.

Hang the stuff that wrinkles in the closet, but otherwise keep everything contained as much as possible in an open suitcase. It makes for a quick exit, too, when the taxi is waiting and Alexa is tapping her foot because she’s the one who has to drop off the rental car, missy.

8. Use the Skype app for iPhone. This is my most important iPhone travel app, more so than my beloved Starbucks and TripIt apps. I like this one so I can say goodnight to my kids in person. Kinda.

Anyway, it’s free, and it’s got video. And what I save on long-distance calls I can put toward their therapy down the line when they tap into their pain at having had an absentee mother!

BONUS TIP: Create some content on the road …

So—your turn. What are your insider tips for coping with business travel?

Of course, words can shift and expand in meaning, too. As E.B. White noted in the seminal The Elements of Style: “The language is perpetually in flux; it is a living stream, shifting, changing, receiving new strength from a thousand tributaries, losing old forms in the backwaters of time.”

And perhaps nowhere has that flux been fluxing with more speed and agility than in the world of Marketing. Interestingly, social media and technology are driving much of the shift—particularly of common words that existed for generations with a single, specific meaning but now find themselves with a complexity of depth and meaning that might surprise even the words themselves—that is, if words had the capacity to self-reflect. Which, of course, they don’t.

Take “friend,” for example. For generations, a “friend” was simply an ally. A supporter. Someone to regard with affection and trust.

Then Facebook comes along, and suddenly the meaning of “friend” is called into question both in an existential way as a noun (Is someone a “friend” even if I’ve never met them, but only know them online?) as well as a verb (as in To add someone to your list of people you are connected to online).

What other words have expanded and morphed in our newly social world? A bunch, including tagging, recommend, traffic, search, link, viral, link, visitor, surf, blast, ping, feed, alert, tweet, find, status, stumble, troll, bandwidth, at, check-in, and vote. But probably these 12 are my favorites:

Share

Was: To use jointly, to partake, or to have in common. Implies giving half a candy bar to a friend, or two toddlers intent on a storybook straddling both their laps.

And also now: The broadcasting of our thoughts, likes, preferences and activities to answer the burning questions: What are you doing? Who are you doing it with? Where are you doing it? How much do you like it? What does it look like? Also: What do you think of what I’m doing and how much I’m enjoying it with the people I’m doing it with?

Curate (as a verb)

Was: To organize and maintain a collection of artworks, artifacts, or specimens, typically in a museum, library, or other esteemed and lofty institution. The person who handles said curating—a “curator” —often has a kind of higher directive or purpose (like to collect fragments of history or art in a specific time and place).

And also now: To continually identify, select, and share the best and most relevant online content and other online resources (articles, blog posts, videos, photos, tools, tweets, or whatever) on a specific subject to match the needs of a specific audience. Today, one might easily curate information about tankless water heaters, in fact.

Follow

Was: To travel or trail behind, or to come after. Conjures up small children, the spiritually devoted, and ducklings.

And also now: To opt into another person’s social stream on one of several social networks, most popularly Twitter or Quora. Kind of like friending, but with less reciprocity implied.

Fail

Was: A verb that means to leave something undone; to be unsuccessful, undependable, insufficient.

And also now: A noun that means an error of colossal scale that exposes a significant, profound weakness and deficiency of a person, event, group, company, action … or just about anything else. Way worse when modified with “Epic.”

Unlike

Was: An adjective that means dissimilar or different. Discerning the “unlike” object is a popular cognitive game for children.

And now also: A verb that means you regard a person, brand, or bit of content with disdain or derision. Similar to unfriend or unfollow.

Fan

Was: A verb that means to agitate the air. Or as a noun: An ardent follower and admirer.

And now also: As a verb, the act of liking a group or entity on Facebook.

Post

Was: Affix in a public place, often for public notice. Implies outlaws on municipal bulletin boards; yard sale flyers on telephone poles; renegade band posters on city edifices.

And now also: An entry made by someone on a blog, site, or other social networking space or forum. Often confused with “blog,” as in “I wrote a blog.” (No, you wrote a blog post.)

Wall

Was: Material—usually stone or wood—that encloses a space and keeps the neighbors out of your business.

And now also: Public space on Facebook to which your friends (and you) can post text, videos, birthday wishes, photos, greetings, and unsolicited invitations to networks like BranchOut, Stik, Roost, and the like. (See “Spam.”)

Hacking

Was: Chopping, cutting, striking into small bits (often in a violent manner).

And also now: Re-configuring or re-programming a computer system, website or online account to function in ways other than intended—sometimes, for devious or nefarious ends (i.e., purposes neither desired nor facilitated by the owner).

Farm

Was: To cultivate by growing (verb); or the thing itself: An area of land devoted to the cultivation of things and (romantically) featuring soft furry bunnies, combed sheep, happy livestock, rich furrowed soil and prize-winning jams cooling on windowsills.

And now also: A content sweatshop that generates large amounts of (generally) sub-par blog posts and articles pecked out by undervalued and underpaid freelance writers; designed to satisfy search engine algorithms rather than humans.

Influence

Was: A power to affect persons or events, often because of a certain power, expertise, or prestige.

And now also: A power to recommend brands to others based on one’s perceived social credibility and expertise, along with an ability to engender trust.

Plus One

Was: A friend or date whom one brings along to an event or party.

And also now: A new initiative that allows anyone searching Google to publicly endorse web results they like. It’s a kind of digital shorthand for a thumbs-up. (The opposite of “Unlike.”)

* * * * *

A big thanks to folks in the MarketingProfs Facebook group for contributing a number of these. So: Your turn. What other ordinary words suddenly have new meaning? Add your own two pesos, below.

It’s curious that I’d never been to SXSW before, right? But for various reasons in the past few years running—when it seemed everyone I knew was heading to Austin every spring—I just couldn’t make it.

(And as my mother might say, that’s a sign I probably never really wanted to go to begin with, otherwise I would have figured out a way to make it happen. She might’ve been correct there: SXSW has always seems a little too big and too overwhelming and too hipster and too Spring-Break-for-Geeks insider-y to appeal to me. But I digress.)

And to be clear, I contemplated not going this year … because my work and travel schedule has been tight, and the jaunt to Austin (a long flight! On a weekend! For just two days! Even if I am speaking!) started to feel insane.

(Do you know how much you pay for a flight from Boston to Austin booked less than 24 hours in advance? I hope you don’t. But I’m sorry to say—I do. And PS: It’s a lot.)

You know that saying about how you can be your own worst enemy? For all my bellyaching about being too busy, about traveling too much, about being too introverted or not cool enough to really get into the SXSW scene… well, what a load of crap that was.

Because the truth is that SXSW is pretty amazing, and if I hadn’t been encouraged by a few people from whom I sought counsel (I’m looking at you, Vahe and Mack and Matt), well … I wouldn’t have even known what I would have missed. Are you following? Bottom line: Not showing up, I understand now, would have been a huge loss.

For me, the real magic of SXSW isn’t in any one thing, and it’s not even anything that’s easy to point to.

How SXSW Is Different

Some conferences—like the ones we have here at MarketingProfs—offer great learning and inspiring keynotes. Some offer great networking; AdTech does that. Some offer an opportunity to rub shoulders with celebrities or even weblebrities—like TED or the more accessible TEDx events. Some are great trade shows and throw off-the-hook parties, like BlogWorld. And others you go to every year to reconnect with friends—you probably have your own favorites here.

SXSW, meanwhile, offers all of that rolled into one: There are a huge number of sessions with varying degrees of learning opportunities. There are tons of parties. There are lots of technology companies and startups: SXSW has a rep as a fertile spawning ground for hot new technologies. (Twitter and Foursquare both shot to prominence after debuting at the show in 2007 and 2009, Jesse Stanchak points out.)

There are weblebrities on hand: You can’t turn around without tripping over a book author. There were real celebrities, too: My daughter squealed like a little girl (perhaps because she is one!) when I gave her a copy of the book based on the new film Red Riding Hood—a gothic retelling of the classic—signed by the film’s director, Catherine Hardwicke.

And everyone else is here, too. This year, there were something close to 20,000 registrants. As my friend and co-author C.C. Chapman says, there are places you go throughout the year to connect with certain groups of industry friends. But only at SXSW are all those people all in the same place, all at the same time. There’s a kind of like-minded shorthand with everyone you meet, making connections seamless.

Then there’s Austin itself. The city is as much a part of the experience as anything. Like Manhattan is a character in Sex in the City, Austin’s small scale and quirky, laid-back vibe is an important piece of SXSW. The pedicabs, cupcake and burrito food trucks, and solar-powered carousel framed the story as much as the 881,400-square-foot convention center.

Some who remember SXSW when it was smaller and more intimate say the event has jumped the shark. The corporate marketers and suits have arrived, and the Spring Break analogy no longer applies. The haters say that SXSW has lost its appeal.

I can’t really speak to SXSW in previous years—and possibly I’m one of those icky marketers the alums moan about (!)—but I imagine that an event that grew by 30 percent this year alone feels a whole lot different than it used to. Then again, I don’t know of a swift-moving industry that didn’t pine for some part of its former incarnation. I remember being at AdTech in 1999 when the suits arrived. They brought money and legitimacy. But still it felt like they crashed our party.

Some Perfect Moments. And Others … Umm… Not So Much

Was SXSW perfect? No way. It’s overwhelming. And exhausting. (I slept for exactly 90 minutes the whole weekend.)

And parts of it were downright annoying. Registration in the convention center comes to mind: You fill out your information on an index card (with a tiny pencil like you’d use on a miniature golf course—really, guys?) and then—with hundreds of others—stand behind a yellow line and wait for your name to be shouted into the cavernous belly of the convention center. It’s loud and really hard to hear, and the whole thing has the panicked feel of a place with limited resources but huge need. Like a Soviet bread line. Or TGI Fridays at happy hour.

But there were perfect moments. A interesting session called Brave New World: Debating Brands’ Role as Publishers—expertly moderated by NPR’s On Point talk-show host, Tom Ashbrook—offered both heat and light. But what was really special about it was the way that it got me and Eloqua’s Joe Chernov—who was standing nearby—talking: How can we help brands understand more specifically how to navigate this new world, where everyone is a “publisher”? What can we cull from a world we both know well—the world of journalism—that makes sense to them?

Also perfect: The way Leigh Durst, principal of Live Path and a MarketingProfs contributor, used SXSW as a launchpad for an impromptu but inspired campaign to collect aid for the relief effort in Japan. Leigh, along with BlogWorld conference director Deb Ng and CauseVox founder Rob Wu, created SXSW4Japan.org (on Twitter: #SWSWCares) in partnership with The American Red Cross, and launched a website at SXSW to collects donations. (As of Sunday night, the group had raised close to $100K.)

And that’s the thing: That’s the kind of stuff that makes SXSW unlike any other event in the digital space. So what does that add up to? For me, that adds up to two things: Inspiration and opportunity.

Like Slamming a Red Bull

I left SXSW feeling alive with inspiration and more ripe with opportunity than I have in a while. Brimming with ideas and contacts, and feeling lit by the energy of the people I met there and their love for what they do. It’s kind of like the conference equivalent of a Red Bull.

Saturday night—my only full night at SXSW—I bumped into my friend Rich Nadworny at a party coordinated by KickApps. One of the things he was hoping to get out of SXSW, he said, was a little inspiration, because he’d been feeling a bit in a rut.

I said I felt that way, too, because there’s a very fine line between a groove and a rut. And with my schedule lately (see that bit about too much work and travel, above), I have felt like I was slipping from the former into the latter.

I was quoting the songwriter Christine Lavin (“There’s a very fine line between a groove and a rut; a fine line between eccentrics and people who are just plain nuts.”) which seems appropriate for Austin, when I think of it now.

Because of the city itself, and because of the conference—both of them full of eccentricities, nearly verging on full-blown nuttiness … but not quite. Which, it turns out, is a great formula for guiding you out of a rut and into a groove.

So who went to SXSW? Who left inspired? And who came away from it not-so-much … ?

Yet there she was, and her check-ins at various spots wove the narrative of her days: that she was heading out to dinner on Friday night, ran some errands on Saturday, and managed to grab a coffee and make it to church on time on Sunday. More significantly to me, it was yet another signal that social location networking is starting to catch on.

It’s true that the population of people using these services is relatively small—even with my cousin on board! A Forrester report from six months ago showed fairly modest adoption rates. But more significantly, services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Yelp and so on attract the right kind of customer for marketers to entice with ads, mobile coupons, rewards, and other location-based campaigns. Why? Because they are more likely to be “Influentials,” and to share their opinion and spread the word about a business. They also encourage others to participate in social location networking, to boot.

Forrester found that 38% of social location networkers are more likely than others to have friends and family ask their opinions prior to purchase. They’re more likely to research a product or service before purchasing, and 14% to 23% more likely to use their phones for comparison shopping. (You can read the nitty-gritty on that here.)

The upshot? Social location networks are increasingly part of the marketer’s toolkit, says my pal Simon Salt, who just published a brand-new book on the topic, the straightforwardly (is that a word?) titled Social Location Marketing: Outshining Your Competitors on Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp & Other Location Sharing Sites (Pearson, 2011). What I like about Simon’s book is that he acknowledges right up front that networks like Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, and others are easily dismissed. (I love that the first chapter of the book is titled “Why Should I Bother?”)

But savvy marketers won’t dismiss these tools. Instead, they’ll make use of the growing trend among the social-media savvy of sharing their location and—more importantly—their opinion about those locations. He shows some businesses already are. But more importantly, he points to clear opportunities for those who are able to move quickly and fast. In other words, this is the book that can give you a vital head start to incorporate social local networks into your digital strategy.

Simon and I chatted recently about his book and why he wrote it.

So, let’s start at the beginning: How to do explain the concept of social location marketing to a non-believer? Or better yet—how might you explain it to your mom?

There is a new craze where people want to tell their friends where they are hanging out. They do this with their phones. They use an app to “check in,” and it sends a message to their friends.

Businesses want to interact with the people who are doing this. This is a perfect marketing opportunity. The question for businesses is what does that marketing look like and which app would be best.

I understand why businesses might want to participate in networks like Foursquare or Gowalla because they want to reach individuals checking in there. But what about individual consumers? Why should they bother?

As marketers start to understand the social consumer and their needs, rewards are becoming increasingly more attractive for individual consumers. Take, for example, the recent partnership between American Express and Foursquare. American Express cardholders can register their card with Foursquare, and when they check in at participating vendors, they receive discounts and credits toward their bill.

JetBlue offers additional air miles for its loyalty program for users who check in at any of its hub airports using Facebook Places. Many companies are now seeing the link between check-in and loyalty, and the fact that these systems can become an automated loyalty program. In fact, Topguest—a third-party check-in aggregator that partners with companies in the travel and tourism industry—is working to specifically tie in different social location sharing apps to loyalty reward programs.

What category or kinds of businesses are really kicking a— in social location marketing?

Retail and the Travel, Tourism & Hospitality industries have been the early beneficiaries of social location marketing. Given that they already had loyalty programs in place and understood the value of repeat business, it was a small step for them to grasp the potential offered by social location sharing apps.

That said, it is not limited to those industries, and we have seen it being successfully used by verticals as diverse as Fashion and FMCG. One example of a business that has used this to grow their business is A.J. Bombers in Milwaukee. The full case study is in my book; but in short, through the use of a one-day campaign,; they managed to grow their customer base by 110% year on year.

What about B2B companies? Where do you see opportunities for them?

B2B companies can most definitely take advantage of social location marketing. One Foursquare-based third-party app produces heat maps of check-ins. While this might seem little more than a pretty picture, when viewed by a company that makes deliveries or service calls in a particular geographical location, it can give them a visualization of their existing marketing efforts.

The areas where their field staff are not checking in is where they don’t have customers. That is a perfect target area for their marketing efforts.

At the Enterprise scale, Lotus used a Foursquare-based competition to select conference attendees to be a part of an evening cruise and receive additional face time with Lotus engineers.

What about virtual companies (like MarketingProfs!) What’s in it for us?

Like MarketingProfs, IncSlingers is a virtual company in that we don’t have offices that our clients come to—we tend to go to them. However, as anyone visiting Austin for SXSW and checking in at any of the coffee shops around the city this year will discover, they are part of something called the IncSlingers Coffee House Tour. Every time someone checks in at one of those locations on Gowalla, they will see a notification page that tells them that they just checked in at a location that is part of the IncSlingers Coffee House Tour—great brand awareness for our company at no cost. (It’s free to set up tours in Gowalla.)

Finally: Why did you want to write a book about social location, when things are changing so fast? Were you terrified it was going to be out of date as soon as it was printed?

Great question. I was concerned about the time-sensitive nature of the book because of the speed of change which is why only about one-third of the book is devoted to the actual apps. The rest of the book is devoted to the strategy and tactics behind good social marketing, principles that do not change because of the change in applications.

I’ve been in digital media for 12 years, and I’ve seen technology come and go, but at the core has always been good marketing communications principles. Those will always be relevant and will endure no matter what the next shiny new object is.

* * * * *

Want to win a copy of Simon’s new book, Social Location Marketing: Outshining Your Competitors on Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp & Other Location Sharing Sites? Leave a comment below and be sure to include your email address; I have three sparkling-new copies to give away.

Aren’t lawyers notoriously terrible writers? Aren’t they known for using Latin (prevaricate) when English (lie) will do?

Doesn’t their love of fancy-pants big words and supposed precision, sometimes combined with a classical education, result in some horribly obtuse prose and obscure reference?

Generally, yes. But not always. In fact, businesses—which now must produce content as a cornerstone of their marketing—could learn a thing or two from Staten Island Civil Court Judge Philip S. Straniere’s “unorthodox” judicial writing. During his 14 years on the bench, Judge Straniere has cited authorities like SpongeBob SquarePants, Laurel and Hardy, and Flip Wilson in his court rulings, according to the NY Times. He writes with authority but, at the same time, with dollops of pizazz.

“Judge Straniere is the bard of the Staten Island courts, offering, in all manner of disputes, homespun advice, original lyrics, puns, and, on occasion, withering sarcasm that can make a decision must-reading,” William Glaberson of the Times writes.

Here are four lessons that marketers can take away from Judge Straniere.

1. The only thing that matters is the audience.

Judge Straniere decided early on that he would write a full decision in every case so that people would clearly comprehend why they won or lost. “He said his goal was to make his decisions understandable,” the Times writes.

Lesson for marketers: You aren’t creating content to please your client or impress your CEO or show off your own mastery of the subject. You are writing to please just one person: Your reader. (Or viewer. Or listener. Or what have you.) Remember the advice of former Guardian science editor Tim Radford: “The classic error in journalism is to overestimate what the reader knows and underestimate the reader’s intelligence.” It’s also a common error in marketing.

2. Remember that one has to read your stuff.

Justice Charles Apotheker, an acting State Supreme Court justice in Rockland County, told the Times that whenever he comes across a Straniere ruling, “‘I have to read it because I’m sure there will be some little twist or something that he wants to share that has very little to do with the decision.’” Such touches, Justice Apotheker said, set Judge Straniere “apart from run-of-the-mill judges, who can be ‘just generally boring.’”

Lesson for marketers: The quality of your content matters far more than the quantity. Learn how to write great headlines. Make sure the first sentence you write is gripping. Write in a human, accessible voice. Have a point of view. Share the stories of your customers. Solve their problems. Have fun with what you are producing. And never, ever, shill your products; that’s just boring.

3. English is better than Latin.

This is another gem of wisdom from newsrooms everywhere, and Judge Straniere, too, clearly understands it. He writes in common, everyday language. He writes in the language you hear in the break room—not the courtroom.

That doesn’t mean he dumbs down the law; it just means that he speaks human, as C.C. Chapman and I write in Content Rules. He understands that the typical Latin lingo of the law world is often inaccessible and impenetrable.

Lesson for marketers: Lose the jargon, the buzzwords, the Frankenspeak, bloated words that suffer from “word obesity.” Adopt English or short words over bloated or long ones. Rather than “ameliorate,” try “improve.” He’s not an “individual,” he’s a “person.” And instead of an “edifice,” how about “building”? As my former journalism professor Charlie Ball used to say, quoting Strunk and White, “Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready, and able.” Another from Tim Radford: “No one will ever complain because you have made something too easy to understand.”

4. A blog post (or article, or podcast, or video, and so on) should say only one big thing.

And you should know what that is before you start writing. Even better: Figure out an interesting way to say it, so you don’t turn off your audience.

Judge Straniere obviously has a single judgment he’s trying to impart, but he makes it a page-turner by tossing in cultural analogies and references to the likes of MAD magazine, Will Rogers, or The Miracle Worker.

Lesson for marketers: Are you finding the best way to capture your audience’s attention? Are you clear about what you are trying to say? A good trick from journalism school is this: Try to express the gist of a piece of content in a single sentence. Doing so will help you focus what it’s about and what your reader will take away from it.

And just like the judge’s content, yours should have some fun. Have some passion for your subject. You have to care what you are writing about and how you are saying it. Because if you don’t, nor will your audience. To quote blogger Johanna Hill of The Mercurial Wife, “Nobody cares until you start caring.”

—-

Here’s your chance to edit the editor: I tossed a few bloated words in this post. I’ll give away a copy of our new book Content Rules to the person who suggests an trimmer alternative to any of the Latinate, bloated words, or phrases I used. Leave your suggestion in the comments. I’ll be the final arbiter … err, judge … of the best example. (Be sure to include your email address, so I can contact you.)

Greg’s premise is that the most successful businesses need to stop with the grand gestures, splashy creative, and big-budget media buys designed to reach and appeal to the widest possible audience. Instead, the most successful business will increasingly rely on “micromarketing,” and they will rethink how they invest in marketing their business.

Here are 3 ways the smartest organizations can embrace the notion that, in 2011, smaller can be more powerful. And by “smartest organizations,” I mean you. Of course.

1. Use small as a competitive advantage. Rather than investing in traditional mass marketing tactics that to make you “look big”—like print ads, radio advertising, event sponsorships, out-of-home, or spot television—try acting small. Rethink how you invest in marketing, and identify more economical and more effective ways to engage your core audiences by using social media, content creation, customer-centricity, and influencer relations.

2. Market like a small businesses. The bigger a business is, the more likely it is to struggle with the things that will spell success in 2011: The ability to market “real-time;” be quick and nimble; emphasize human-scale, one-on-one interactions; embrace simple social media approaches and the amplification effect you get when the right people start spreading their interpretations of your messages and content throughout their social graphs; and maintain a maniacal focus on super-serving niche audiences (or “microcultures”), as Greg calls them. Need help? Take a page from small businesses, which are typically more natural micro-marketers and are generally more open to serving niche audiences.

The best businesses in 2011 will think and act this way, rather than trying to be all things to all people.

3. Understand how to create microcontent. What’s “microcontent”? It’s all the bite-sized pieces of information and entertainment we create and share on the social Web: our tweets, our photos, our short Facebook or LinkedIn status updates, shared links with a sentence or two of commentary as to why we’re sharing, all those two- or three-minute YouTube videos, Greg says. He uses the term “microcontent” to contrast all of this with the more conventional notion of content—long articles, television shows, movies, books, etc.—that have generally been the domain of mass media outlets.

Microcontent, Greg says, has become a currency of the socially connected—people love it when their friends share bits of content that are cool, interesting, informative, entertaining, funny, shocking or eye-opening. The challenge for business is to create microcontent that connected consumers will want to share (hint: not your ads, and nothing penned in Frankenspeak). Or consider how you can partner with your customers to create compelling microcontent that is relevant to your brand, and provides new ways to get the word out about your company, products and services without spending a lot of money on paid media buys.

So what other ways can you think and act small in the coming year? Leave a comment below, and let me know.

Need some inspiration? I’ll pick a lucky individual at random and will give away a copy of microMARKETING to jump-start your 2011 marketing. (So be sure to leave an email address!)

Which is why I love what Eloqua has done with agency JESS3, who collaborated to develop “The Blog Tree,” or the world’s “first visual depiction of the interrelationship among marketing blogs,” according to Eloqua’s Joe Chernov. Is it a blog list? Is it an infographic? Yes. It’s also playful and is intended as a kind of fun representation of the interconnected ways the marketing blogosphere blooms.

What I love about the tree analogy is the way that it also suggests a constantly changing landscape. New buds emerge, leaves fill out and fall, branches grow and sometimes get trimmed. The tree bears fruit and then goes dormant, according to the season. It’s a constant state of evolution: Just like blogs themselves.

Wait. Is that a little too heavy … ? How about this: Trees are fun to climb, and trees like this one offer lots of opportunities to travel around from branch to branch, getting a new perspective with every foothold. (Better?)

So check it out. And enjoy!

Oh, and by the way, another content “rule” is to Create wings and roots. This advice is usually applied to parenting (give your children roots to keep them grounded and wings to explore new worlds). But it applies to content nicely, too: Ground your content solidly in your unique perspective and point of view, but it give it “wings” to soar freely and be shared across social platforms, all over the Web. And of course, it’s a No Duh! analogy for Eloqua and JESS3’s Blog Tree!

P.S. I also love the way Jess3 published the original sketched concept.

Check out the full post over at Eloqua’s blog.

by Lindy Dreyer

Maddie and I come from the association industry, where membership is at the core of our business model. You might think of the MarketingProfs membership model as an example, but actually the MarketingProfs model is just one example of a thousand different variations on the membership theme.  For many of us membership people, community is old hat. It’s what we do. It’s central to our work. And yet, for some reason (actually a lot of reasons), what we know about community isn’t always translating well to building community online.

Until very recently, associations “owned” their community. These tended to be very closed systems, where the association itself had a huge amount of power by controlling the ways in which members were able to communicate with one another. If you wanted to have access to other members, you joined and kept up with your dues. Some associations still operate quite successfully this way, at least for the moment.

And so, for a lot of association executives, the natural way to approach social media was to recreate their closed systems using new, shiny tools. But that’s not enough; paying dues is no longer the only way for me to interface with an association’s community. It’s a classic value problem, and no amount of marketing can fix that. The only fix is a new approach to online community for associations.

That’s why we wrote the book Open Community. Your Open Community is your people who are bonded by what the organization represents and care enough to talk to each other (hopefully about you!) online. The book covers concepts that are critical for connecting with your open community. This isn’t rocket science, but it challenges the association industry’s preconceived notions of membership, which is pretty scary when that’s the foundation of your business.

OK … I’ll quit jabbering and leave you with this excerpt, which I think is universal enough for every marketer—whether you’re working within a membership model or not.

You know your business, but do you know your community?

Building community online doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does take work. It also takes courage, knowing that you’re going to put your organization out there without knowing exactly how everything will unfold. You’re used to being able to predict the results of the work you do. You know your business—maybe too well. You may have a hard time seeing the possibilities created by online community. Or you may see so many possibilities that you can’t clearly see the easy wins and first steps.

It’s hard to step back, to see the big picture, when all you’re thinking is: How do we start harnessing all this conversation? How do we embrace the messiness of community in a way that makes strategic sense for the organization, in a way that is mission driven? We have unofficial Facebook Groups, we’re on LinkedIn, some of our staff are active on Twitter, maybe we should build our own homebase now. How do we make sense of it all? How do we give it direction?

And it’s easy to get caught up in the way you’ve always done business, closing yourself off from possibilities that may very well supplant those business processes. Moving toward a more social model of running an association stretches us. It tests our patience, and it’s crazy scary. But when you really get a handle on your community, when you really know who they are, what they need, where to find them, how to get them talking, how to get them acting collectively, you learn what you’re doing right and what you need to change, and you make more intelligent business decisions.

Does having members make building community online easier? No. Not when membership is more a business model than a declaration of true connectedness. What do you think? Are you leveraging online communities in your business? Are you having more success within a closed community model or an open community model? You see the hurdles that membership organizations are facing—are you having similar challenges?

Penned with my friend C.C. Chapman, Content Rules demystifies the notion of businesses as publishers and gives you actionable ideas of how you can make the most of the tremendous opportunity we all have: To speak directly in very human, engaging terms with a broad number of people you want to do business with, with the goal of furthering your relationships with them, and creating momentum for your business.

In the history of business, have you ever had an opportunity to do that? To engage directly? To converse with a unique and honest voice? To tell your story yourself, rather than waiting around for the press to notice your specialness? In a word, no. Which is why I call it an opportunity, and which is why you need to think really deeply about how your content can really rock. (And it can!)

I play a marketer on the Internet, but I’m also a long-time business editor and writer who has been developing content that audiences dig for all of my career. And the ideas in this book are really special to me.

Content Rules. It’s probably the only marketing book that I feel qualified to write, in fact, in part because content is one of the few topics I feel completely versed in. The rest of you probably can run circles around me—metaphorically speaking—in dreaming up and executing the specifics of campaigns and triggering response emails and developing branding strategies and the like. I know enough about those topics to know what’s smart thinking and what’s not, but I also know enough to know what I don’t know.

Content, on the other hand, is something that’s near and dear to my heart. Developing great content that engages audiences and build community is a kind of mission that excites me, and all of that passion and energy is what I’ve poured into this book.

No matter what size your business, I hope you’ll buy a copy of Content Rules. It’s in a few select stores today (my cousin found it in her local Barnes & Noble this past weekend!), and Amazon is now shipping it. You can also get it from Borders or a number of other online retailers. Of course, if you sign up for MarketingProfs University’s Content Crash Course, you’ll also get a copy—FREE! And if you are looking to get your arms around this whole idea of content, that’s your best bet.

Oh—and please come to the virtual book release party on Facebook! You could win a free copy along with other fun prizes!

It’s not that I don’t like to cook—because I do—but the wet bread thing (as in French toast, bread pudding, and Thanksgiving stuffing) turns me off. In other words, it’s a little like asking the deaf guy to bring the music.

So, I consult a few of cookbooks, a few websites, the Epicurious iPhone app. But mostly I’m distracted by stuff I’d rather make: the mashed potatoes with olive oil and parsley? Yum. Butternut squash soup with apple and bacon? Now we’re talking …

But still: the stuffing. Sigh. Then I happen upon a useful tool on Fine Cooking that instantly seems the answer to my wet-bread dream: a “create-your-own” bread stuffing interactive recipe maker that allows you to mix and match your favorite ingredients to create your own customized bread stuffing.

Choose a bread base (cornbread, crusty artisan bread, pumpernickel, etc.), drag it into a big yellow mixing bowl, and then and add in 3-5 vegetables (leeks, celery, fennel, maybe?), along with other stuff (chestnuts, dried cherries), meat (bulk sausage, bacon), herbs and liquids (broth? Wine?) and… voila! The tool spits out a custom bread stuffing recipe, with balanced measurements of your chosen ingredients, and the correct ratio of liquid to bread.

“The trick to making a good stuffing is getting the moisture right,” Fine Cooking says. “You don’t want it to be soggy or dry.” Can I get an A-men?!

There’s so much I like about this tool—not just because I was desperate for a stuffing recipe I could get excited about, but also because it aligns so well with the concepts C.C. and I lay out in Content Rules. Here are two of them:

1. Create utility. Most businesses have embraced the notion that, in addition to being in the business selling whatever they sell (be it shovels or security systems), they also need to be producing content as a cornerstone of their marketing, both to engage and educate their would-be customers, and to get noticed by search engines.

But at the same time, producing any old content isn’t enough. Businesses have to produce the right kind of content: web content that is honestly empathetic and seeded with utility for your customers. They have to be “brand butlers” to their customers. Fine Cooking’s bread stuffing tool does just that: It creates a resource for its discerning subscribers who are challenged to create something other than the same ol’, same ol’… but who need a little help with the particulars.

To paraphrase Content Rule #6: Share or solve; don’t shill. Good content doesn’t try to sell. Rather, it creates value by positioning you as a reliable and valuable source of vendor-agnostic information. Your content shares a resource, solves a problem, helps your customers do their jobs better, improves their lives, or makes them smarter, wittier, better-looking, taller, better networked, cooler, more enlightened, and with better backhands, tighter asses, and cuter kids, and moister (but not wet) stuffing.

In other words, it’s high value to your customers, in whatever way resonates best with them.

2. Have a point of view. Fine Cooking doesn’t just lay out the fundamentals of Thanksgiving stuffing without editorializing because its readers want to know its take. The people who read the magazine consider themselves competent and inspired cooks, and they want to know the why and not just the how. So, I like how Fine Cooking’s writer (Jennifer Armentrout) has a point of view and perspective:

“In my opinion, stuffing baked outside the bird (also called dressing) is the way to go: your turkey cooks faster and more evenly, your stuffing gets nice crisp edges, and you don’t have to worry about undercooking.”

Plenty of people who read Jennifer’s reasoning might disagree, but at least you know where she stands on this issue. Jennifer might have just said, “Cook it inside the bird or outside; add more liquid if you cook it outside the bird.” But the actual name of an actual person with an actual point of view does more to humanize the Fine Cooking brand than bland commentary without editorializing ever could.

* * *

So what can you take away?

Like Adagio Tea’s Tea Timer, which helps tea aficionados brew a perfect cup, or Virgin Atlantic’s Taxi 2, which connects those who want to share a cab, the Create Your Own bread stuffing tool — one of several Create Your Own tools published by Fine Cooking — presents an incredibly useful and relevant piece of content, matched to both the needs of your customers and the business’s objectives. Oh, and it meets another official Content Rule: It’s FUN!

What else can organizations take away from Fine Cooking’s Recipe Makers? Here’s my take: A little inspiration.

Here’s the bottom line: Are you helping and supporting your customers in their goals, or just selling to them?

Brand Haiku: Starbucks

Almost gave you up
Dunkin, Peet’s might woo, but still
My black heart is yours.

Brand Haiku 2: A Supposedly Quaint Little Inn I Stayed at Recently but Never Will Again

There’s something tragic
In weak coffee, powdered cream
To greet a fresh day.

* * * * *

So, your turn: Add your own Brand Haiku in the comments. I’ll choose a winner and will send you a signed copy of my new book, Content Rules (Wiley), when it’s published in … hold on, let me count … 15 days! I might even toss in a haiku penned just for you.

Next in the Brand Haiku series: Beth Harte. On Twitter, follow #brandhaiku.

(And BTW, if you haven’t checked out #ProfsChat yet, you might want to! See more coverage of a recent #ProfsChat about LinkedIn.)

But anyway … CK said that over half the people on this planet—or 3.4 billion people—currently own mobile devices. CK emphasized the “b” for billion. Research from the MarketingProfs Mobile Marketing Factbook shows that an amazing 61 percent of adults ages 18-24 say they rely on their mobile phone for the latest information, and almost a third of adults ages 18-44 say they get more news from their phone than any other source:

Click to enlarge:

(That survey was published last fall. I’m guessing those numbers have spiked since then.)

Another impressive number: There are more than 300,000 mobile apps today on Apple’s platform alone—up from 200,000 last year. Many of these apps have been launched by brands as a new way to extend their reach, as CK talked about last week in her seminar on B2B and mobile. (You can still access it On Demand, if you missed it.)

But the challenge both for B2B and for B2C companies seems to be less around the whether and more around the how: not whether brands should have a mobile presence, but how to create a mobile app or site that your customers will actually find useful.

In other words, how does a company create a mobile strategy that delivers clear utility?

Thinking through your mobile strategy opens up a bigger and more foundational question we all need to address as brand owners, as Pete Blackshaw wrote last month in AdAge.

Rather than create another digital “one-off,” brand should ask themselves some important and fundamental questions, Pete said: “[W]hat’s the fundamental value and benefit our brand brings to the table, even beyond the physical realm? What’s the brand’s reason for being? What core service logically and naturally extends from the core brand proposition? What is our desired brand experience?”

Some of the most interesting apps are those that create some value for the user—but as logical and connected extensions of the brand itself. They offer a set of benefits that complement and complete the brand; they act as a kind of “butler” for your brand: Creating a service that’s helpful, has relevance, and clear utility for your customers, as it aligns with the notion of serving is the new selling. Gerry McGovern talks about that idea here, too, when he says that support is the new marketing.

Densebrain’s  SitOrSquat Bathroom Finder (sponsored by Charmin) helps people find the best local public bathroom; Virgin Atlantic’s Taxi2 remains a web tool, but it strikes me as a perfect fit as a mobile application.

Pete Blackshaw points out a few others. Both The North Face and REI offer snow and ski mobile apps; Timberland offers an Expeditions app. Pizza Hut makes pizza ordering a snap, and I’m a fan of the Chipotle app’s efficiency and ease.

So where do brands start?

A step toward uncovering what kind of mobile service would offer your customers the most utility, of course, is to simply listen. Ask customer service what your customers have questions about, monitor what they search for on your site, hear what they are talk about on social platforms, and see what opportunities suggest themselves there. And, of course, ask them directly, through surveys or interviews.

Which is the perfect setup for my question here: Like a lot of brands, we believe that a mobile strategy is key to the continued growth and relevancy of MarketingProfs for you, our customers. So to that end, we’d love to know what you think: Do you have 27 seconds to give us your input as we think through our own mobile strategy, and improvements to our existing mobile app?

Take the (super-short) survey here.

So what about you? Where are you with your own mobile efforts? What’s your take on how brands can provide mobile “utility”?

1. B2B social media is like sex in high school: Everyone claims they are doing it, but few actually are.

(And most of those who are doing it … aren’t doing it particularly well.)

B2B marketers are embracing social tools as a way to connect with customers and grow their businesses. Most attendees have some kind of social presence or say they imminently plan to. Most have attempted a blog or Facebook page or have peeked at Twitter. When Guy Kawasaki asked at his closing keynote, How many people think Twitter is stupid?, only two brave souls raised their hands high.

Nonetheless, most B2B marketers have yet to truly embrace the full social tool set for their business, and sometimes for themselves. Only a handful of attendees checked into the event on Foursquare, for example, which I thought was surprising for an event in the heart of Silicon Valley. One attendee I met summed it up nicely. “We have a blog, but it sucks,” she said. “We’re here to learn how to change that.”

Guy Kawasaki at SocialTech 2010

In other words: B2B marketers + social = lots of room for improvement. But just like post high school, there’s every reason to anticipate a more satisfying relationship down the road.

2. Content isn’t enough.

Most B2B marketers have embraced the notion that they are also “publishers.” In other words, they understand that in addition to being in the business selling whatever they sell—be it cappuccino machines or consulting services—they also need to be producing content as a cornerstone of their marketing, both to engage and educate their would-be customers.

But at the same time, producing any old content isn’t enough. B2B companies have to produce the right kind of content: web content that is honestly empathetic, seeded with utility for your customers, and that reflects your businesses core values and is inspired by your unique perspective and authentic “voice.” As Robert Scoble pointed out in his luncheon keynote, “When you are trying to sell something, a human voice does it better.”

3. Social objects can set you apart.

Those B2B companies succeeding with social media innately understand that customer engagement doesn’t necessarily take place on their own web pages. Jeremiah Owyang articulated this perfectly in his morning keynote: Your future web strategy isn’t based around your website and technology, but around people and connections.

How can B2B capitalize on that trend right now? One way is to create “social objects” that allow your prospects or customers to spread your message for you across the social web. What’s a “social object”? It might be a cool digital tool or other kind of content (an interesting infographic, a compelling SlideShare presentation, a video, etc.) that your customers take and can share on their own blogs, Facebook pages, or other social platforms.

But a social object might also be as something as simple as a real-life stuffed animal: Marti Konstant of OK Labs told a story of how various incarnations of her company’s stuffed mascot, Iggy Wanna, have partied at bars in Barcelona and gone to trade shows in Shanghai, as documented by people who have gotten their hands on one and uploaded their photos with the iguana to Iggy’s Flickr page, among other things.

What’s the value of getting people to take pictures of themselves with your stuffed icon? It raises awareness and interest in your company and builds a sense of community around your business in a humorous, offbeat, very human way.

4. Social media is like baseball.

As I left San Jose, Game 1 of the World Series was set to commence nearby. So it seems apt to include this final point, made brilliantly by Brian Watkins, Social Media Manager of Adobe.

How is social media like baseball? True baseball nuts love to pour over the stats of their favorite franchises and pet players. They love to compare stats like stolen bases, strikeouts, ERAs, RBIs, sacrificed hits, and so on; meanwhile, all the League really counts is two things: Wins and Losses.

Similarly, social media fans love to pour over their own endlessly fascinating (but ultimately meaningless) stats: number of fans or friends or followers, number of retweets, number of views on YouTube, comparative social clout, and on and on; meanwhile, all the C-suite really counts is Sales.

The important thing is to recognize that while it might be interesting and satisfying for aficionados to indulge in their own stats, what really matters is the biggest picture. For business and social media, that means: Are you connecting socially with your customers in a meaningful way, that actually makes them do business with you? Are you keeping your eye on the ball?

By the way, you can access all of SocialTech 2010 sessions On Demand, whether you were there and had to make the hard choice between two compelling tracks, or whether you missed it entirely. Access it here.

The upshot was how to bring content (like stories, podcasts, blogs, and so on) more central to any brand’s marketing; I talked to an audience for the first time about some of the concepts C.C. Chapman and I explore further in our book, Content Rules. (That “first time” bit was a cool thing, by the way.)

The following day, a panel of high-level marketers representing companies of all stripes—from the long-established (Kodak) to the cool upstart (Threadless), and a few in between (Virgin America, Benchmark Brands) offered up their take on trends in marketing and business, like: How have social media and technology changed the evolution of marketing? And how do you get people to engage with your brand and the products you sell?

One of the major themes that emerged there was (surprise!) … Content! And specifically, what stories, blogs, video, livestreaming and more should be doing … Yeah. Like I said.

It was gratifying to hear some of the same themes I talked about the day before reinforced by the CMOs of some pretty smart companies. I’d like to think it was just because they all attended by presentation the previous day (ha!). But the truth is that producing great content is something so many companies are increasingly embracing; I particularly loved the panel’s comments around the idea of “storytelling” as a cornerstone of what they’re doing to market online.

So what does storytelling have to do with business?

“Storytelling” is one of those works that I always find impossibly squishy in a business context. For me, it always conjures up more performance art than industry; more fiction than fact.

But the idea of storytelling as it applies to business isn’t about spinning a yarn or fairytale. Rather, it’s about how your business (or its products or services) exist in the real world: how people use your products—how they add value to people’s lives, ease their troubles, help shoulder their burdens, and meet their needs. Think in those terms when producing customer stories, case studies, or client narratives—so that people can relate to them. In that way, your content is not about “storytelling,” it’s about telling a true story well.

Here’s how to relate the art of storytelling to your business:

1. Ask, “What are my customers genuinely interested in knowing about?” As the panel said: The job of marketers is to generate new ideas and pull compelling stories out of their organizations by figuring out what their audience is genuinely interested in seeing and reading or knowing about. Think about what you do, how to tell that story, and how to engage your customers through the stories you tell, said Jeffrey Hayzlett, author of The Mirror Test: Is Your Business Really Breathing? (Business Plus, 2010), who left his job as Kodak’s chief marketing officer in May.

That’s critical especially for business-to-business companies, which often sell intangible products or services that aren’t intrinsically interesting, but the way people use them are interesting. At Virgin America, for example, the hallmarks of what the brand is known for—leather seats, mood lighting on its aircraft, wireless connectivity—expresses the story, in part, of how the airline goes beyond the ordinary, added Porter Gale, vice-president of marketing at Virgin America.

2. Tell how your products or services live in the world. Actually—don’t just tell: Show. Uncover the real-life instances of how your product lives in the world by looking to your customers for inspiration. “Have their story be your story,” said Cam Balzer, vice-president of marketing for Threadless, a community-driven T-shirt and apparel company. Benchmark Brands incorporates customer stories of how its products help people into its marketing.

If a shoe is meant to help someone with heel pain, Benchmark doesn’t just state that fact, “but we tell the story of someone for whom it made a difference,” says Trish Tobin, Chief Marketing Offier of Benchmark, which sells more than 2,500 styles of comfort, wellness and therapeutic footwear through its Footsmart brand.

3. Have their stories be your story. At Threadless, an artist receives $2,500 if his or her shirt is printed and sold in the Threadless store, and his or her inspiration for that design is woven into the site, and, more broadly, into the company’s brand. Tell the story of how your products came to be, or how your customers use them. Even if you’re making something less naturally prone to story than customer-designed T-shirts or therapeutic shoes, “your product can still be content,” Balzer says.

* * * * *

This is only a small bit of what the panel discussed (but it was the best part!)

So what do you think? Has your company embraced storytelling? How?

Behavioral targeting is all the rage these days, and for good reason in general. The caveat is just that, however: in general. When it works, it works great, creating greater recall, brand lift and ROI. However, when it doesn’t work, it really doesn’t work, and can lead to serious concerns over privacy issues. It often backfires by correlating consumer behavioral data and making assumptions about that person that aren’t true.  

For example, I recently did some research on some baby products for my daughter, who has a one-year-old boy. I also went to a few of my favorite car sites and cruised some collectible auctions. The next thing you know, I’m targeted with ads for minivans. I’m a single guy. The last car on the earth you’d catch me driving is a minivan. But based on my behavioral data, I looked like the ideal demo target. Wrong, really wrong. Or how about the ads I got targeted with after I reviewed some low-sugar recipes on a major food network? Diet ads. That just irritated me because I am not overweight. I am diabetic. That’s different.

Though algorithms can track contextual relevance from keywords and apply overlays for demographics, geolocation, even psychographics, algorithms can’t make the synaptic living connections that the human brain does automatically. Put simply, there is no algorithm smarter than the human brain.

Worse than being unreliable, behavioral targeting carries unsettling concerns over privacy, both for the consumer and for the advertiser. When services and networks use cookies to collect consumer behavioral data, and then use that data for targeting, the companies are actually selling the intellectual capital of the advertiser’s audience to someone else. They are also often selling personally identifiable information. For example, if someone visits a credit card site that services challenged consumers, that person is highly likely to be targeted with ads for high-risk mortgage refinancing, payday loans and all kinds of shady offers.  Is that a service or disservice to the consumer?

There are alternatives.

When consumers are given the choice to provide specific data and opt in to engage in a specific transaction, then the advertiser can begin a relationship with that consumer. In social media, establishing trust and communication is essential to building a relationship. That gives the consumer confidence in the advertiser and can turn them into brand ambassadors.  In social media marketing, for example, some companies provide sharing tools that let consumers relay an advertiser’s message by email, blogs, instant messaging and social communities, such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, etc. Most providers use cookies.

I would argue there’s another, more targeted and effective way: the Human Filter Factor. People instinctively know how to respond to specific offers and will filter how they pass these on. They won’t pass on a local grocery store coupon to their family three thousand miles away. They won’t pass on a Depends offer to their recent college graduate, and they certainly won’t send a Hooters two-for-one Saturday night special to their minister.  But they will send out that two-for-one Jamba Juice coupon to everyone they know because who doesn’t like Jamba Juice? A recent Jamba Juice social media marketing campaign achieved a 126% click-through rate with just such an offer. A large food and beverage company expected to have 5,000 coupons redeemed in a 30-day period. Jamba Juice reached those numbers in just two days. Not every campaign will have those kind of blow-away numbers, of course. But many do. And almost all campaigns that use referral marketing in social media deliver much higher efficiencies than standard digital advertising campaigns. After all, it’s only natural. People like to share. And when they have a trusted relationship with an advertiser, they want to share that offer or news or special promotion. It’s a part of our nature.

Behavioral targeting and privacy are all over the federal government’s radar for good reason. But with judicious use of services that protect consumer information and privacy, advertisers can build their brands with increased consumer loyalty.

A lot of the content that marketers can find and reference these days aims to inspire, motivate, and educate.  This article is a bit different. This article is for marketers who most sincerely want to fail. It’s for marketers who find success very run of the mill. It’s for people who want to fall on their marketing swords. To that end, then, here are 10 ways to achieve complete and total failure as a marketer. (And if you don’t want to fail, consider it your to-don’t list.)

1. Start a Facebook account, LinkedIn account, Twitter account, and a blog. Set everything up, so it looks like activity is imminent. Then let the accounts sit there, abandoned. Do not revisit them. Forget your passwords.
2. Start the same way as above, but this time, start the accounts armed with information you want to share. The key point here is that you want to start all of the accounts without researching whether your competitors and customers are there. Do not under any circumstances give careful thought to your avatars, your design, your usernames, or any other such details. Feel confident that your content is important enough that people will gravitate to it.
3. Measure your success based on leads, not sales.
4. Assume that marketing has nothing to do with public relations, sales, customer service, or anything else. You are autonomous. Marketing is as marketing does. Silos are popular. Just look at the Midwest.
5. Once you silo yourself, make sure that your marketing tactics are similarly separate from each other. Do not give any thought to how advertising could support a social media campaign. Do not ponder how exhibiting at a trade show could have anything to do with lead nurturing. Every tactic is an island.
6. Interpret levels of success in social media based on the numbers of fans or followers you have. Once you reach a pre-established milestone on both sites, it’s a good idea to add the word “expert” or “guru” to your profile.
7. Do not under any circumstances consider search engine optimization in anything you do. You don’t need to optimize your website or anything else. You’re on Facebook and Twitter!
8. Assume that nobody understands anything you are talking about because you reside in the new and in the details.
9. Do not share tips, tricks, or information. You worked hard for that data. If someone wants it, they’ll have to work with you. And pay you. A lot.
10. Act like a marketer. Everywhere you go, pitch something that someone can purchase. Send automatic direct messages enticing people to buy your services or your products. And remember: Promote yourself as much as possible.

I can guarantee that following even following just a few of these steps, in no particular order, will deliver the marketing misery for which you are striving. Trust me. I’m a guru.

Marjorie Clayman is director of Client Development at Clayman Advertising, a full-service marketing communications firm located in Akron, Ohio.

After receiving her bachelor’s degree from the College of Wooster (Ohio), Marjorie went on to earn a Master of Library Science as well as a master’s degree in history from Kent State University. Five years ago, she became the third generation to join the family firm, which her grandfather founded in 1954. Recently, Margie has spearheaded the company’s efforts in promoting social media to the agency’s business-to-business and medical clients as a viable part of their overall integrated marketing campaigns.

Greg’s book hasn’t arrived in my mailbox yet—curses for choosing Super Saver Shipping!—but I had a chance to chat with Greg about the book’s fundamentals recently.

AH: OK, so what are you talking about when you talk about “micromarketing”?

GV: We all know what mass marketing looks like—grand gestures, splashy creative and big budget media buys designed to reach and appeal to the widest possible audience. The problem? This type of marketing is less likely than ever to actually appeal to anyone at all. In large part, this is due to the splintering of mass culture into millions of niche microcultures, and the hyper-fragmentation of mass media into an infinite channel microcontent universe (in other words, that pesky social media thing).

In microMARKETING, my thesis is that in today’s environment businesses can achieve better results by tapping directly into these trends—or as I say, by “thinking and acting small”—than they can by bucking against them and pining for the good old days of Super Bowl spots and homepage takeovers.

AH: So when one door closes, another opens … as you say on your site (quoting Alexander Graham Bell).

GV: Right. In contrast to mass marketing, micromarketing emphasizes the use of small gestures (like one-on-one, person-to-person interactions), simple social media approaches and the amplification effect you get when the right people start spreading your messages and content throughout their social graphs.

AH: Can organizations of all sizes be micromarketers?

GV: Absolutely. In the book and in the presentation for Thursday’s seminar, I draw examples from big companies like Ford, Coke, Walmart and Samsung on the one hand. And microbrands (by which I mean small businesses and even individuals) like By Lauren Luke, #blamedrewscancer and author J.C. Hutchins on the other.

Because micromarketing is all about doing the right small things to get big results, it’s less about the size of your organization and more about your willingness to think differently and take new approaches.

AH: What else are you covering Thursday?

GV: In addition to giving attendees a peek at some of the key concepts from my book, the seminar will be packed with plenty of real world examples and actionable ideas that they can begin applying to their own businesses as soon as the session ends—it’s not all theory and it’s not just the same old stuff social media experts have been hammering on for the past three years.

As an added bonus, I have a beautiful speaking voice that makes for some mighty fine online listening.

* * * * *

To Greg’s last point:  It’s smooth as buttah. : ) See for yourself at Greg’s last presentations for us in the past here and here. (The latter gives an excellent tutorial on Second Life, if you happened to miss 2007 entirely.)

Hope to see you Thursday! Preregistration is not required, but you might want to save the date. Don’t miss this one! (Of course, you can always access it On Demand later, if you do. )

Note: This seminar is free for MarketingProfs Pro members.