Optimistic Rebel

Per Angela Moore’s suggestion, I’m posting about the big social media merger that didn’t happen.

As an aside, the title of this post is a riff on James Carville’s talking points for Clinton’s ‘92 campaign. Sound familiar?

Back to the reason the merger didn’t happen. Culture. I can’t think of a better reason for calling the whole thing off. Especially when it comes to social media. While it probably seems like a long time on the internets, the practice of social media is a relatively new discipline, driven by… dare I say… optimistic rebels, optimistic about the promise of Web 2.0, rebelling against ineffective traditional methods of mass communication.

Here’s an excerpt from Maggie Fox on the break-up:

It was during this time that Geoff and I both realized that, while similar, our organizations and management styles were very different, and that integration would not be in the best interests of both firms. I have the utmost respect of Geoff and his team, which is why it was so important for us to make this tough decision now rather than later, when the stakes would be so much higher…

You thoughts on the matter?

World’s Largest Social Media Agency? Not this time. | Social Media Group

I first noticed this product on Woot, when it sold out in like six seconds. One of these days, the Bacon Salt Guys will be a textbook case for social markeing:

Along with a traditional website and blog, Bacon Salt was promoted strongly across social networks. Along with Lefkow’s YouTube account, Bacon Salt created groups on Facebook and MySpace. Thrown into the mix was a Twitter account and even a Zazzle store. The aim was to build viral brand awareness while keeping costs low. None of the accounts I visited had huge numbers, but from what I’m told, they were enough to plant a viral seed. Word of Bacon Salt grew, and within 3 months of launching the product Bacon Salt was popping up in the strangest of places…

Bacon Salt: How two tech guys created a viral food sensation

I’m posting this excerpt because of the significant amount of money Frank Warren/PostSecret raised. Granted, the amount of traffic the site receives is greater then most (Compete.com pegs it at 84K unique visitors a month), but that’s not the point.

Imagine if you could build that sort of community and engage them to take some sort of action?

Frank Warren of PostSecret writes about Using Social Media to Generate Positive Change on Mashable.com:

Emerging communication technologies like Blogs, virtual “places,” online chats and other social media are allowing us to have new kinds of conversations. Conversations that can bring people together in the real world and generate positive change.

Last month PostSecret raised over $500,000 for 1(800) SUICIDE, a suicide prevention hotline. This would not have been possible if people were not continuing to share their most personal, inspiring, shocking, sexual, funny secrets with me, themselves and the world…

What do you think?

I suppose if you’re too busy to blog and outsource the writing of it, you’re not going to want to be talkin’ about the weather, but remember blogs are social media and your initial readers are most likely bloggers themselves. It’s much easier to resonate with your readers and keep them coming back by connecting with their humanity. If you have to compete for their attention, use all the approaches you can!

Three keys to corporate blogging success from Meghan:

1. Define your niche carefully so that your expert content will be easy to find when your prospective customers are typing keywords into Google. Work hard to integrate key phrases that will appear again and again on your blog–and which relate specifically to your market niche.
2. You must keep blogging consistently over time before you will see results. Several entries per week are ideal.
3. Stay on topic. Don’t start rambling on about your dog or the kids or the weather.

From Rob Mackay’s post Learning from Scrabulous:

[C]ompanies need to be much more in tune with the increasing number of Gen X and Gen Y moms and dads who live their lives online in ways that much of upper management just doesn’t understand…

Though Rob is talking particular of toy companies (his post is about Hasbro and Scrabulous) the broader implication is that the big changes have taken place in people’s media consumption. Are you changing with them?

Over on USTelecom.org, Brooke Oberwetter writes about an NYT article detailing the use of broadband by TV news outlets:

Rather than concentrating resources on expensive, highly staffed news bureaus in just a few locations around the globe, the Times reports that many networks are relying on a “new breed” of journalists–digital journalists…

Is news coverage better when it’s broadband enabled?

USTelecom Blog » Journalism 2.0

My experience supports this premise written about by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba in their book Citizen Marketers—roughly 1% of your site visitors will create content within a democratized community.

I know what you’re thinking: “1%?! You’ve got to be kidding me! I’m not going to waste my time…”

Well, don’t miss the section I’ve highlighted in the excerpt below. The operative phrase—Over time:

To some marketers, the polar opposite of the 1% Rule — the Law of Big Numbers– might doom any decision to dedicate resources toward a democratized community. Should it? Not necessarily, although any community organizer should be prepared to accept the reality of slow, incremental growth, not a big, Hollywood-style opening.

It would appear that small groups of people often turn out to be the principal value creators of a democratized community. Over time, their work fuels widespread interaction that engages the non-participating community and attracts new ones. If continually nurtured, the community can become a self-sustaining generator of content and value…

What are your expectations for the blog you’ve just launched?

The 1% Rule: Charting citizen participation: Church of the Customer Blog

I’m experimenting. As I’m adding blogs to my reading list, I’m checking to see if the blogger is on Twitter, and if they are, I’m following them instead of adding them to my already-overloaded feed reader. Over on BFD, I use twitter tools to notify followers when the blog is updated. It’s pretty handy, because I’m not the sole author, and I like to know when others update it!

What’s your blog reading strategy? Please comment or take this poll:

Here’s a follow up on my post this morning:

A growing preference for social networking, texting and cell phone communication, combined with disenchantment with email proliferation and irrelevance, are starting to impact the effectiveness of permission-based email marketing, new research from JupiterResearch confirms.

The online survey revealed that 44% of email users made at least one online purchase, and 41% made at least one off-line purchase, during the prior 12 months as a result of promotional emails. That might sound good on the surface, but those numbers are considerably lower than 2007, when the respective percentages were 51% and 47%…

MediaPost Publications - Social Networking, Texting, Cell Phones Impact Email Effectiveness - 08/05/2008

So apparently for me, part of the Optimistic Rebel blog is exploring the contradiction in things—as in how can one be optimistic and rebellious at the same time. So this post by Jeff Pulver on e-mail Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in a Web 2.0 World caught my eye.

While I totally agree with his suggestions, I’m curious about the premise—that Web 2.0 has fundamentally changed the way we expect to receive emails. While I think that you’ll get better responses by being more personal, I think that it’s because people used to communicating via email are used to the impersonal nature of the medium. Any extra effort is like a glass of water in the desert.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s essential to respect the person you’re targeting. I’m just wondering—what percentage of people on a web 2.0 platform (for example, twitter) would prefer to receive a shorter version of the email you’d send them there? What’s the ratio of social media adopters to email users? If the survey says Boomers aren’t into social networks, doesn’t that include Web 2.0? If they don’t use platforms like twitter, why would they expectations be any different for email?

As I’ve said before, make sure your demographics align with the channel you’re using. As a PCer , with a blog, twitter account, and being on various social networks, it makes more sense to connect with me there. Beyond that, I avoid email as much as possible, for the reasons I list above. As much as everyone clamors about Jason Calacanis’ retirement from blogging to focus on a listserv and his proclamation that blogging is dead, I don’t think an email to 750 subscribers (while abandoning the medium he profited from as CEO of Weblogs Inc.) is as immediate and intimate as he’d like to think.

Would you agree or disagree? Why?