Marketing Hipster

If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen that I had acupuncture for the first time yesterday evening.  A bunch of folks have asked how it went so I decided I would turn this into a short blog post.

Question:  Why? or Why are you allowing someone to stick you with needles?

Why not?  I actually just finished a book that talked about acupuncture in great detail and it sounded really interesting.  I have been looking into ways that might help me relax and unwind and acupuncture has been shown to help with that.

Question:  So how did it go?

It actually went very well.  Let me set the stage for you.  I got to the place and they brought me into an exam room with the lights a little bit low and some nice new age music playing in the background.  I took off my pants and shirt and laid on my back on the exam table.  (I had shorts and a t-shirt on, seriously did you have to go there?)

The acupuncturist walked me through everything as she went and stuck about 30 needles in my body.  The needles were spread out between my legs, feet, hands, arms, top of head, face and ears.  The needles really did not hurt.  Although a couple of the needles in my ear did smart as she put them in, but nothing was that bad.

She then told me that she was going to turn the lights down and to relax on the table with the needles in me for the next 30 minutes.  What, what, what??  I did not realize that I was supposed to lay there with the needles in me and do nothing.  I was thinking about asking her to hand me my Blackberry, but I thought that might not be the best idea.

She told me to just relax.  I found that ironic as the reason I was there in the first place was I have trouble relaxing.  <– Irony!   Anyway, I laid there and tried some breathing and meditation techniques she instructed me on, but to be honest for the most part, I just laid there and thought about things.

After 30 minutes, she came back into the room and pulled all my needles out.  As I was getting up and getting dressed, I felt very much like how I feel after getting a real good message.  You know that loose, maybe a little sleepy feeling.

Overall, my initial foray into acupuncture was a success and I am going to try it once a week for the next four weeks and see if it provides any value.  I will keep you apprised as I go.

Last week, I worked with a number of fabulous folks from the Triangle AMA to put on a Social Media Boot Camp.  We had an amazing turnout with a talented lineup of speakers and a great group of eager participants.  My presentation focused on how to Protect Your Brand in the Conversation Age.  There was one section that I discussed that seemed to resonate with folks so I thought  I would go into more detail here.

One of the challenges when it comes to monitoring your company, products, people, brand and even yourself online is the incredible amount of information available.  I work with several clients that their company name alone is written or spoken about online more than 5,000 times a day.  Most companies don’t have the resources or the time to be able to go through all that noise.

One of the ways I get through all the clutter is to triage my mentions.  By triaging, I can quickly determine the discussions I need to spend more time and attention on and which ones I can kick to the curb immediately.  When I think of triage I always think of the old TV show MASH.  Remember that show with Alan Alda based in the Korean War?  When the helicopters and buses came in with wounded GI’s, they would go running out to meet them to determine which guys were hurt the worst.  The triage allowed the soldiers with the most serious injuries to go to the head of the line ahead of the less serious.

Social Media triage is the exact same thing.  We need to quickly look at what our monitoring has identified and determine what needs your time and attention and what does not.  There are a number of tools and technologies that say they can do this work for you.  To be honest, I have not found one that I am willing to make a financial investment in, so I have put together a rag-tag way to triage my online mentions without having to pay out any cash.  Here’s the Silverstein Social Media Triage process:

SearchStatus – My browser du jour is Firefox, if you happen to use Chrome, I am sure there are plugin’s like this one.  SearchStatus is a free Firefox plugin that embeds the Google Page Rank, Alexa ranking and Compete numbers right on the bottom of your browser.  Very quickly, I can go to a web page and get a good idea on what kind of visibility a specific webpage and website receives in Google as well as how much traffic it gets daily, weekly and monthly.

If you are not familiar with Google Page Rank, Google assigns every page within its index a ranking from 0-10.  This ranking determines how much visibility it receives in Google’s natural search results.  I think about the rankings this way:

• Page Rank 0-3 – MIA – Website/page is not competitive in Google
• Page Rank 4-6 – Visible – Competing on some of their keywords
• Page Rank 7-8 – Rock star – Top rankings and strong visibility
• Page Rank 9+ – Oprah – Owns it!

Please remember if you are on a blog page that just launched, the page might not have any page rank because it is too new.  My recommendation is to go to the blog’s home page and see what their page rank is there.

Next let’s look at our Compete numbers.  If you right click while your mouse hovers over the Compete graph, it will tell you the average monthly visitors the website receives.  If you would like, you can click over to compete.com and get more information.  Registration is required, but basic package is free.

In just a couple of minutes you can pull together the following information:

• What kind of visibility a webpage/website has within Google.
• How much traffic this website receives daily

With knowing these two items, you can make an informed decision on whether this mention deserves more of your time or not.  Though, I have one more item to add into your bag of tricks.  I believe one important characteristic of an “influencer” is he/she creates or develops conversations on their own website as well as on other websites.  I like to look at how many and what kind of comments does the original post have?  How active of a community does this website have? Are there other conversations taking place elsewhere that are linking back to this original post?

To see conversations on other websites linking back to one place, I like to use this cute little bookmarklet called Convotrack.  This is a tool that you add to your bookmarks toolbar and when on a web page, you click it and it shows you any and all conversations taking place on the web that are linking back to a specific page.

This quickly can show you how many folks are talking about the post and what kind of visibility is it receiving out on the interweb.

Everything that I just walked through should take you no more than a couple of minutes to complete once you have the tools setup.  Is this full proof?  Absolutely not.  All of these tools should not be taken as the gospel by any means.  I believe these tools and others like them will allow you to quickly triage your online monitoring to  help you spend more time on what is most important to you.

If you have your own tools or tips, please feel free to add them to comments below.

Have you seen the video of North Carolina Congressman Bob Etheridge getting in a physical confrontation with what looks to be a young student?  You can read all the details and see the video over at WRAL. I have also included the video below.

Wow, someone was having a bad day.  Rep. Etheridge cursing the invention of the video camera knew he had no choice and issued an apology.  WRAL has the whole story here and here is his apology:

“I have seen the video posted on several blogs.  I deeply and profoundly regret my reaction and I apologize to all involved.  Throughout my many years of service to the people of North Carolina, I have always tried to treat people from all viewpoints with respect. No matter how intrusive and partisan our politics can become, this does not justify a poor response.  I have and I will always work to promote a civil public discourse.” – Rep. Bob Etheridge (NC-02)

I am not writing this to call to arms all the trolls and hammer Etheridge for doing something dumb, I majored in dumb and continue to excel at it today.  I would like to discuss Etheridge’s apology statement that he released.  To the PR/Communications staffers in Rep. Etheridge’s office who wrote this, I have to ask one question.  What are you talking about???

“No matter how intrusive and partisan our politics can become, this does not justify a poor response.  I have and I will always work to promote a civil public discourse.”

What does partisan politics and public discourse have ANYTHING to do with this event.  You weren’t having a debate on the House floor Representative.  You were walking down a public street and two “students” (Maybe?  Rumors are this might of been a setup) asked you whether you supported the President of the United States agenda.  Not only are we allowed to do this, our constitution empowers us to question our elected representatives.

Can’t we get to a place where we as marketers and communication professionals effectively communicate to our target markets without throwing in a whole lot of double-talk and BS?  I am far from a PR person, but I would like to try rewriting this apology.  You have seen Rep. Etheridge’s response, now here is how I would of wrote it:

“There is absolutely nothing I can say other than I am deeply sorry.  My actions were inexcusable and no-one has the right to lay their hands on another person.  I want to sincerely apologize to the young man in the video and I also want to apologize to my constituents who deserve to have someone in office that represents them much better than I did today.”

Which version do you like better and why?

Been a very busy week and tomorrow it gets busier as we are putting on the Triangle AMA Social Media Boot Camp 2010.  We have an entire day of rock star speakers talking all about the in’s and outs of social media.  The event is sold out and I am real excited to speak as well as hear the other speakers.

A number of folks will be blogging and tweeting from the event live!  If you would like to keep track of it on Twitter, we will be using the hashtag #smbc2010.

You can keep track of all the action right here as well as on Capstrat’s blog.

My friend Karl Sakas for reasons beyond me wanted to interview me and talk about marketing, my history and the Grateful Dead.  Karl put out a summary of what we spoke about if you are interested.  What I enjoyed most was Karl and I getting together and having a great conversation.  How can you beat that?

An interesting discussion has been taking place in the Twitterverse and the web regarding a local bakery who tried to “garner attention to help us sell more tasty cupcakes“. Well they really got the attention part down, but I have a feeling if you asked owners of Just Crumb, they probably would like to have the last couple of days back. I am not going to go into the all the details of what happened, if you want the blow by blows, check out the following articles:  The Gloss, Jezebel, Fatshionista and Ignite.

To summarize quickly, Just Crumb bakery attempted to be hip and cutting edge and adopted the slogan, “So Good It Makes Fat People Cry”.  A woman took offense to that slogan and wrote the owners an email.  The owners responded insensitively and proceeded to ridicule this woman via Twitter up to and including calling her the dreaded “C” word.  This sparked a great deal of attention and right about this time I have a feeling the Crumb owners realized that they were not in Kansas anymore.

They proceeded to throw gasoline on the fire by tweeting, “Things we learned on Tuesday: Apparently we do not have private Twitter accounts anymore. Everything is business. Lesson learned.”  (I hear this in my best Lumbergh impression) Yea, unfortunately you did not learn any lessons because no-one cared whether your Twitter account was private or not, they cared about you ridiculing and demeaning another person for reasons unknown. Finally, Crumb posted an apology on their blog which proceeded to get 80 comments of people ripping them a new one before Crumb turned the comments off.

I am not writing this to pile on with everyone else.  To be honest, I feel sorry for the Just Crumb owners.  I have at times in my life said and written things that I wish I hadn’t.  People who are passionate about what they do at times allows that passion to get away from them and we sometimes communicate poorly.  I was actually looking at these events more as a case study in PR and social media.  I was wondering if I could speak to the owners of the bakery right now, what I would tell them and what could they do today, right now, to help themselves?  Here is what I came up with.

You reacted wrong.  You need to realize your initial Twitter post about private accounts, huge mistake.  You did something wrong, we all do, you needed to man up and admit that you were trying to be edgy and funny, but unfortunately it turned to something highly objectionable.

Stop hiding! You haven’t posted a blog post since Tuesday and you haven’t tweeted since Wednesday.  This is the time that you need to be out there communicating with everyone!  You need to turn the burner to high.  You are going to take some hits, stand up and take them.  It is much easier for people to yell and scream at people they do not know or can’t see.  It is much harder for folks to yell and scream when you are willing to pull up a seat at the table and engage with them.  You might not be able to change everyone’s opinions, but you will receive props for showing up.

Put a face to this issue. I know you just want to crawl away and hide until this is over, but you can’t.  Other than the small amount of local folks who know you, no-one knows what you look like.  Your website, blog and Twitter accounts don’t have any pictures of either of you.  If it was me, I would record a video and post it on YouTube and your blog.  Put a face to your names and show your humanity.  Show that your real folks just like the people who are angry with you right now.  Show in your faces and what you say that you realize you made a mistake and want to sincerely apologize for it.  Once again, you are human and we make mistakes.  People will forgive if you ask for forgiveness.

The web never forgets. You are waiting for this to blow over and it will.  Unfortunately, Google has become the memory of the web.  All these blog posts, all the tweets, they will all be indexed by Google and will come up when people do searches for your company as well as your own names for years to come.  Knowing this, don’t you want people to see that you reacted the right way to this crisis?

What do you think? What did I forgot, what did I miss?  Thoughts?

Dear Blackberry,

I write this letter with a heavy heart.  We have been together for a long time.  Come to think of it, you are the longest relationship I have ever had.  There has been a Blackberry attached to my waist pretty much everyday for quite a long time.  I remember the first time we met.  You were a brick of a phone with your cute little antenna and you had me at qwerty.  It’s been a relationship where we have both grown and have become successful in our fields.  Unfortunately BB, I think we have grown apart.  Once upon a time, I believed you genuinely cared about me and what I thought, but now not so much.

For the longest time, I have been a true Blackberry customer evangelist.  I was one of those guys who sung your praises, recommended you to anyone who asked and was always an early adopter when you came out with new devices. But now as I cradle you in my hand, all I feel is disappointment in what you have become.  I doubt you have any inclination to listen to me or anyone else for that matter, but I feel like I need to share with you the reasons why we must go our separate ways.

1. Your OS is poor to say the least.  While Apple, Google and even Microsoft have constantly and consistently improved and grown their operating systems, yours is woefully behind and to be honest a bit embarrassing.
2. Speaking of embarrassing, you should be ashamed of your browser.  It is almost impossible to read a web page with your browser.  There have been many a time that I could put my BB down, shave and come back just as the page loads.
3. Your app store is an absolute failure.  This probably has something to do with your crappy OS. The top application developers are putting their time and money in developing for the iPhone and Android.
4. As a marketer, I think your marketing has been criminal and you have truly lost your voice.  Apple’s marketing talks about “there is an app for that“, Android promotes their extensive capabilities and what are you doing?  You have a bunch of people dancing while the Beatles or Black Eyed Peas play in the background.  Fail.

I think the final straw in our relationship was the Blackberry Storm.  I am an early adopter so I expect to run into a bug or two when I purchase new technology, but seriously, you should go door to door and apologize for releasing the original Blackberry Storm.  Very simply put, it did NOT work.  The OS was buggy as hell and the touch screen was a mess.  You pushed a product out before it was ready and in my opinion, you jumped the shark as a company. You put profits over your customers and once you lose our trust, it is very hard to get it back.

I hope I am effectively expressing my disappointment in this post BB.  I had a real emotional attachment to you.  I actually wrote an email to your CEO, VP of Marketing and your PR agency to thank Blackberry for playing a role in my wife and I getting married. I am not making this up (copy of email here).  My wife and I worked together and our relationship began by us IM’ing each other through Blackberry Messenger.  I believe Blackberry Messenger allowed us a way to communicate that we would not of been able to do without our Blackberry’s.  By the way, I never got a response back from anyone. Shocking…

One last thing before I end this diatribe.  As a marketing professional, I have been amazed with how much your company talks online, but you never take the time to listen. You are making an incredible amount of noise on your blogs, Twitter and Facebook, but its all a one-way conversation.  This is not what these tools are for.  Look at your blog for example, the amount of comments you receive is a fraction compared to the information you post.  If I could offer one piece of advice; stop, take a breath and start listening to the people you should care about most, your customers.

Blackberry, we had a good run, but with any relationship, it takes work to keep it fresh and fruitful.  I don’t think you care like you once did and to be honest, I believe I along with all your other customers deserve better.

This blog is a couple of years old and for a good period of time, I was pretty dedicated writing at least several times a week.  I built up a pretty good audience and really connected with a number of talented and interesting people located all over the world. When all of a sudden I stopped writing.  I don’t know any better way to describe it other than life got in the way and all of a sudden, I didn’t feel like writing anymore.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not making excuses.  I have been trying to nail down exactly when I went off track with my writing and even more importantly, why?  I don’t know if I have any definitive answers to be honest. One of the only conclusions I have come up with is that for a while now I have not prioritized my life correctly.  I have put things on the top of the list  that shouldn’t of been there.

That is all coming to an end right now my friends.  My focus is to once again put the time and effort into rediscovering my voice here on Marketing Hipster and hopefully connecting with the people I once was in contact with as well as with new folks.  During my hiatus from this blog, I have been spending a good deal of time on Twitter and some real amazing things have happened.  I have developed a number of wonderful connections with people through Twitter prior to ever meeting them in person.  And when I finally get the opportunity to meet them in person, it is just that much better because of the relationship we had already established via Twitter.

There is so much noise out there and I think somewhere within all that noise, I got lost and forgot about what was really important to me.  What I have come to realize is what gets me up in the mornings and gets me excited about my day are the amazing connections we have the opportunity to create. If you think about it what other time in the history of the world has technology reached a point that allows us the freedom to express and connect with others around the world?  There are no borders or boundaries to what we are capable of.  Moving forward that is what I am going to focus on.  Discussing and reaching out to as many interesting people as possible, creating connections that I and hopefully my readers can learn from.

One of the connections that I made online prior to ever meeting in him person is a smart gentleman named Phil Buckley.  Phil and I were chatting on Twitter last week and he said something in regard to writing regularly on the blog that really stuck with me.  He said, “If I go 7 days without writing in my blog I start to feel the guilt.  After 14 days, there is no more guilt.”

Right on Phil.  Here’s a toast to new beginnings.

Here is my problem:  I had to wipe my PC yesterday and reinstall Windows and all my programs.  I know, I know, if I had a Mac that would not happen.  Let’s stay on topic.

I reinstalled iTunes and signed in with my username and password.  Now I am a big fan of a lot of podcasts and are subscribed to more than 100 audio and video podcasts.  The problem I have is I already have like 1000 podcasts on my actual iPod, but you cannot sync from the iPod to iTunes, it has to go the other way.

Even if I chose to go and resubscribe to each podcast, if I sync my iPod, it will erase ALL the old episodes I already have on my iPod because they are not part of my iTunes library.

So I am asking for any advice on how to resubscribe to all my podcasts without having to delete all the existing ones already on my iPod.  Your help is greatly appreciated!

Recently,  I caught the video of We are the World 25.  It is the remake of the original We are the World song with proceeds going to support Haiti.  The first thing that struck me was I could not believe it had been 25 years since the original We are the World.  Let that soak in for a second, 25 years!  I work with some folks who were not born yet when the original came out.

It kind of blew my mind because I totally remember the original We are the World.  I was 13 at the time and only one of my friends had cable TV.  We all went over to his house to watch the video of We are the World on MTV.  MTV was running it once an hour every hour.  And now 25 years later, there are all new rock stars participating in this one.

I have to tell you the first time I listened to the new version, I hated it.  I think it was more because it was different from the original that I had grown up on and loved.  Though I have to tell you, the new version has grown on me.

What do you think?  See below for both versions.  If you are old enough, what memories do you have from the original one?

Original:

New: