BrandToBeDetermined

What Social Media Means for B2B Marketers

From my talk yesterday at the Business Marketing Association in Houston, here is the slide deck.

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Social Media for B2B Marketers Synopsis from the BMA site:

The buzz about "Social Media" in the marketing community is deafening, but what does the rapidly emerging trend mean for B2B marketers? Can YouTube, Facebook and Wikipedia really help you forge closer ties to business customers?

That's the subject Ed Schipul, CEO of Schipul - The Web Marketing Company, will tackle during our February 21st luncheon. Ed himself has a business-to-business blog, (www.brandtobedetermined.com) and is a leader of Houston 's vibrant Social Media subculture. His talk will examine examples of B2B marketing through Social Media -- including what his own experiences as a CEO blogger have taught him. The discussion will showcase best practices as well as examples that failed to have the intended result.
Please join us for an interesting and entertaining look inside this important issue.

Commotion - something to think about

Stephen's presentation from GotSocialMedia has me thinking about the concept of "commotion" quite a bit. I found myself running with his concepts and extending it into "Markets are Commotions". But that is a different blog post.

For now, here is PoetPainter's presentation on slideshare from GotSocialMedia. See slide 24 in particular.

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Careful with the word "research" Mr. Tabin

No, a conversation is NOT considered "research" Mr. Tabin. To state otherwise is wrong.

My original plan was to ignore this erroneous tweet - specifically the part I highlighted in yellow above. I saw it after my presentation at GotSocialMedia last Thursday. Unfortunately a number of people believed Josh and have asked me if I was working with him! Thus I feel it needs to be corrected openly on behalf of the community as the original comment was made in a public forum.

Let me be clear. Josh Tabin has not in the past, and will not in the future, collaborate with me on "research". He most definitely was NOT a part of research on the 3 Motivations of People article. Period.

Social Media for Non Profits Presentation

Presentation from today at GotSocialMedia. Thanks again Erica and Kelsey for having me as a speaker! And now here is the deck.

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Resource Links - The 3 Motivations framework comes from years of research of sociology and psychology. It is *not* revolutionary or new, rather it is a simplification of academic research into an actionable framework. I like simple. You know, something you can do by folding a paper in thirds. If I get credit for writing it, well, to be fair I'd like to also post the bibliography from the original article on schipul.com.

Got Social Media Conference - 2 More Days!

Two more days until the Got Social Media conference in Houston. Whoooooop! And of course as a speaker I am biased, but I hope to see y'all there!

Also - a huge shout out to Erica and Kelsey for all of their work planning the conference. Job well done y'all!

The details:

Got Social Media: A Conference about communication. on Thu 24-Jan-08 9:00 AM

At the Houston Technology Center

Houston Technology Center
410 Pierce St.
Houston, TX 77002

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@deneyterrio's new Social Media Video

@deneyterrio has a somewhat retro take on social media below. And on the subject of social media, are you attending GotSocialMedia next week in Houston? Please JOIN us!

So here is the video:

Two Examples of Micro Fundraising Today

Two great examples of micro-fundraising today. First Andrew Hyde and the folks from StartupWeekend had a goal of $500 to cover dinner for Startup Weekend Boston. Using Crowdfunder he is at $550 with a $200 anonymous donation. For dinner. This is a fund raiser for dinner. Interesting.

Crowdfunding Startup Weekend Boston

So now we can all use our iPhones and chip in for dinner.

On a far loftier scale, we have Beth Kanter's personal fundraising campaign to send a girl to college.

Twitter, Facebook, Chris Brogan and 52 other people send Cambodian girl to college!

From a tech perspective and a social perspective, both of these are wonderful occurrences. Fun with money.

The Profit of Diversity and The Wisdom of Crowds

I firmly believe that the reason you should be diverse is it makes you smarter. Diversity makes a business more profitable. There is a bottom line positive impact in business that can be achieved by surrounding yourself with people who do NOT agree with you. Yes look for shared values in hiring people, but also be sure to look for diversity of opinion and thought and backgrounds. Diversity is the most profitable thing to do.

On this topic, there is a great post on O'Reilly about the Wisdom of Crowds. Three points emphasized below, although you really should read the entire post, are (note - emphasis added on all three excerpts by me).

One of James Surowiecki's key observations in his book of that name was that a diverse collection of independently-acting individuals produce the wisdom of crowds effect. To the extent that those individuals reinforce each other's opinions rather than preserving independent decision making, they tend to undermine that group intelligence.

and

The problem: everyone was in more or less the same stocks, with the same offsets, so this strategy, a winner when only a few people were using it, became exposed to much more systemic risk merely because the technique had become so widespread.

and

In thinking about the future of collective intelligence, we need to make sure that we not only think about systems that lead to convergence of opinion, but also ones that ensure divergence, and fresh inputs. The surest way I know to get this is not to pay attention to the breaking news in your own pond, but to find the next community over, and to create new cross connections. Once the connections are well established, move on.

Shout out to Chron.com for Progressive Blog Link Outs!

A definite shout out to the link to this blog from chron.com this morning in the news and opinions section. Thanks! And Love the drop down of all blogs they have linked to. The more love you give the more love you get in the gift economy. So thanks again to the best damn newspaper in Texas!

Stretching Out of my Comfort Zone on Social Media Programs

  STRRRREEEETTTTCH! 
  Originally uploaded by eschipul

An ongoing debate I have with our PR team revolves around the topic of "social media programs" (I hate the use of the word "program" in this context BTW). And of course we see a lot of companies announcing "social media consulting services" and even entire new agencies focused on the topic of just social media.

To me this is much like Nike and advertising. We all want to be Nike, but we are not ready to grow like Nike, which started in 1962 but did not begin advertising until 1980! From wikipedia:

By 1980, Nike had reached a 50% market share in the United States athletic shoe market. Its growth was due largely to word of mouth advertisement, rather than television or print adverts, which Knight and others in the industry found distasteful.

Perhaps the biggest challenge comparing advertising and social media is that a company CAN throw money at advertising. "Here is some money - go buy me some ads." Perhaps they can even throw money at Public Relations as an outside PR agency can and should come up with creative ways to get people talking. Perhaps something as simple as a PR stunt. (or perhaps using cutesy chipmunk pictures on your blog. cough) It works.

Social Media on the other hand is different. In a draft article (activated a bit early due to the typepad.com feature I admit) we compare social media as a four step process:

1. Consulting - defining objectives, LISTENING, measuring baseline, willingness assessments, etc.
2. Training - knowledge transfer starts with student selection and teacher (you!) capabilities
3. Recruiting - recruiting students with baseline knowledge is crucial to success in a complicated field
4. Promotion - it IS ok to promote within reason and with disclosure

This article on social media is still a draft in process. What are your thoughts? (hint - post a comment people! I'll love you for it. Or if this were a line in a movie it would be called "you had me at submit")