NewComm Collaborative

We’re very pleased to feature this excerpt from Geoff Livingston and Brian Solis’ new book, Now is Gone.

Chapter 3: Building a New Media Effort

Your organization is ready for its new media effort.

Great! Now what? Well, more often than not it’s time to figure out what kind of new media effort your company will engage upon. Many organizations opt for a blog, but this may not be the best use of your resources. For example, Coca-Cola decided to enable residents of Second Life, an open-ended virtual world, to create their own cyber-Coke machine instead of a blog.

Typically when engaging in a marketing effort, companies map out their product strategy, and the audiences that they want to market towards. The more successful ones research their audience before they engage, understanding their buyers’ needs. Marketers often set up communications tactics to reach their targets and compel them to act. Measurements are created to determine the success of these efforts. Then, a campaign is launched.

Remember, audience-based approaches can negatively impact a company in the new media realm, therefore a community approach should be used. With a change of attitude and tone, most of the same principles apply; namely research and selection of new media vehicles based on the likelihood of success and resources.

Successful marketing campaigns have good marketing, but superior marketing usually only works when there’s something valuable to offer. Truly exceptional marketing campaigns make strong products and services sell quicker, and bad products fail faster. 1 This paradigm applies to the new media world, too, only at warp speed. So be sure that your product/service/idea is ready for prime time before engaging in a new media initiative.

These four steps can help you determine what to communicate and how:

1. Focus on the community’s interests
2. The Editorial Mission: Build value for the community
3. Who and what
4. Inspire your community to believe

Focus on the Community’s Interests

A community’s interests lie at the heart of any new media initiative, from business discussions to the newest Hollywood gossip. Initiatives succeed when companies and organizations create content that serves its communities’ interests.2 Remember, it’s about the members of the social network.

Understand who your community really is. If you have a community of 50 rocket scientists in the western United States, create your initiative for them, not the entire blogosphere. Whether they are affiliated en masse with a community like Facebook or simply are philatelists who use blogs to discuss their latest stamp finds, a community enjoys specific types of information and content that is relevant to them.

“Forget the Technorati 100 thinking,” said Like It Matters author, Brian Oberkirch, in a Buzz Bin interview. “Being famous to 15 people is a huge advantage if they are the right 15 people. Keep in mind that blogging mostly has indirect effects: You are building an online resume for yourself that is going to reward you in ways you really can’t predict. Honor your readers’ time. Give them great stuff to think about.”

Information types and discussions rarely include organization-based propaganda unless the public discussion revolves around a specific cause. In those cases, organization-based initiatives are often discussed, with merits and defects bantered about. This does not mean a company should outright pitch to the public, as this might be found offensive, particularly from an unknown player within the network. Not only do communities have unique information needs, they also have unique forms of engagement. Even if the company is a well recognized brand, it still makes more sense to research the community before taking any outbound activity.

Research remains the primary form of intelligence gathering for your potential social network. There are several ways to understand which social media forms and voices are the most important to your company’s effort. First, begin with searching social media and blog directories (Technorati, Google, Ice Rocket and BlogCatalog.com) using keywords. Explore these blogs, video sites, social networks and Web portals thoroughly.

Second, determine which new media creators are leading your industry. Technorati’s authority system is flawed, but does provide a rough benchmark of which social media outlets get the most attention. This system links to a blog or portal to determine the authority of the outlet. Authority does not necessarily mean that the blog is well respected, as the links may be negative or bolstered by paid-for reviews and/or link-baiting, and links do not equate to traffic or RSS subscriptions. Nor does Technorati’s authority effectively measure the most important users in social networks, like YouTube or MySpace.4 Still, at the time of writing, Technorati’s authority rankings offer the best system out there for initial blog research.

Once preliminary community leaders are identified, get to know their content. Dive deep, read the information, consume the content they link to in their posts or honor rolls, and notice how the community interacts with these thought leaders. Learn what content excites the community by measuring the most popular posts and media, this can be judged by comments, referrals and link-backs. Study how topics make it to the forefront.

Your organization may even want to begin participating by commenting and adding general content to the mix, but be careful about discussing corporate information until your organization fully comprehends its new media strategy. Further, understand that your voice may not be respected until the company makes significant contributions to the community.5 Corporate messaging will not work effectively in the social media world. Instead, try to just be a part of, and start building some early goodwill and relationships. Also learning how to participate as a community member will help establish positive relationships.

“The best thing a business can do is cultivate an understanding [of] the culture,” said Toby Bloomberg, author of the Diva Marketing Blog.

“Blogging/social media is unlike any other marketing strategy I’ve seen. It is built on a culture that incorporates community, and as with any community, there are social norms that newcomers must know about. Informal checks and balances are in place and if you color outside of the lines, the blogosphere is not shy about letting you know.

“Frequently that slap on the hand is not contained within the confines of a few blog posts, but instead is picked up by mainstream media. The impact to the goodwill of the brand or business may be significant. The most critical aspects to keep top of mind are honesty, transparency, [and] authenticity.”

It is important to explore competing initiatives from other companies and organizations. Check if they’re respected by the community, if they’re being discussed and how (negatively or positively). See how the community reacts to corporations and entities selling to them, and how other companies have successfully turned the community into advocates for their services. Analyze their efforts in comparison to your research findings about what makes the community tick. Some of these efforts will have failed and it is important to note why.

You can use formal market research studies conducted via surveys of social network members. Networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, offer these direct access forms of research.7 Of course, many members will not take the survey, mirroring similar survey results in the brick and mortar world, too.

Your findings create an understanding of community interests, observations, and interactions that can direct a successful new media effort. Most importantly, a gauge of what’s valuable to the community should be obvious. The roadmap to creating successful content should be available to you.

There should be strategic pointers, including specific subject areas, types of popular stories and content. Use these trends to create the basis of an editorial mission for the new media effort.

The Editorial Mission: Build Value for the Community

It may seem parochial in nature, but one thing new media creators can learn from traditional media outlets is the creation of phenomenal content targeted towards a particular community. Garnering thousands or even millions of readers (depending on the size of the community) requires superior content, continued innovation and ongoing creativity.

“In order to implement a successful strategy, think like a publisher,” said David Meerman Scott in his new book, The New Rules of Marketing & PR. “Marketers at the organizations successfully using the new rules recognize the fact that they are not purveyors of information, and that they manage content as a valuable asset with the same care that a publishing company does.”

Great publications use an editorial mission to guide their content creation to fulfill a purpose. The content is written to educate or inform readers, listeners or viewers about a particular or general subject matter. If content wavers from the mission, it’s often discarded by a managing or executive editor whose job revolves around fulfilling the editorial mission and serving the community.

“Our [editorial mission’s] focus is really on the reader, and I think that is more true now then ever before,” said Chris Dorobek, editor-in-chief of Federal Computer Week and author of The FCW Insider Blog. When asked if an editorial mission could apply to a blog, Chris replied, “The short answer: Absolutely. As I mentioned, we are there to help people get their jobs done more effectively. But a part of that involves building a community, and I think blogs can play a key role in that.”

Unfortunately, a classic public relations error involves not understanding targeted publications’ missions and what they write about. This often leads to horrific rants from reporters, some of which make it to the blogosphere (for examples, see the bad pitch blog).10
Marketing minds have to understand the importance of editorial missions, not only for outbound PR efforts, but for their own new media efforts. By sticking to an editorial mission statement, the new media content stays on track, creating value for its community by providing regular, intelligent copy, pictures, audio and/or video, that stays on topic.

Creating value builds opportunity in a win-win fashion for both your organization and your larger community. In this particular instance, valuable and well structured content towards a particular social network’s needs allows you to contribute, participate and garner respect. By creating content that better suits the social network’s needs, they will inherently come to trust your effort, and will want to work with you.

“How cool would it be for [BMW loyalists] to interface directly with a BMW representative on a regular basis” asked Todd Defren of SHIFT Media.

“Pretty cool. And more importantly, it would present customers and prospective buyers with a highly-trafficked blog that BMW truly cared about. I recognize that there are challenges for any company to scale, including training and monitoring a group of ‘community managers’ that could serve as adjuncts to the marketing group. But [what] is worth doing that isn’t going to be a challenge?”

And that’s really the rub. Going through the difficulty of creating value for the community so they find it worthwhile (a.k.a cool for BMW owners). This requires a) knowing what the community wants, b) understanding the intrinsic value the company has to offer, and c) being creative enough to deliver this value in a way that’s interesting and compelling. This is where the art of marketing can help your new media initiative.

There’s one major pitfall to avoid in an editorial mission: Trying to overtly promote the company. This error remains one of the most common reasons corporate new media initiatives fail. Companies engage in social media because they want to market themselves, and they think new media forms are just another way to promote their wares. This error creates blogs that are never read, videos that are never played, and podcasts that buyers don’t download.

There’s no better example of this than the Wal-Mart corporate blogging scandal. This fake blogging or “astro turfing” incident demonstrated that Wal-Mart was more interested in tricking readers into believing the company was genuine in its correspondence. Instead, most citizens found Wal-Mart to be a profiteering, dishonest company, which permanently hurt the company’s image. In an informal poll, Copywrite’s Rich Becker found more of his readers saw Wal-Mart’s flog as the biggest social media ethics transgression to date (36 percent).12

Promotional blogs bore the casual social network member. Sales pitches have no inherent value to someone who is interested in the company’s general category. Getting ‘sold to’ by corporations fails to meet the casual users needs and defeats the reason behind their use of the social media form in question. Content must appeal to the community, and this means delivering valuable, interesting new media initiatives. Promotion only works when it creates substantial value for your community. That doesn’t mean a corporation should create yet another ‘day in the life’ blog.

“If you want to create a blog that covers your industry rather than offering the typical company diary, that’s fine too, even if the blog Pharisees criticize you for not adhering to blog orthodoxy,” said Scott Baradell, president of IdeaGrove. “Ultimately, it will be the quality of what you produce that will matter, not whether your ideas fit into someone elseâ’s box.”

Content should be authentic, providing information that’s inside the organization’s natural and obvious areas of expertise. The organization’s knowledge is its primary source of value to a community. Sharing relevant and interesting subject matter-specific content allows the company to build its image as a community leader or expert.

Business is complex, and in many ways, a simple subject matter may not be enough. Content can span several categories to create enough flexibility for the organization to discuss several initiatives. For example, GM’s Fastlane has specific content areas, namely: Auto Shows, Bob Lutz, Business, Cars & Trucks, Design, Podcasts and Photo Albums.14

GM’s Fastlane captivates audiences because it talks about developments within their product line (as opposed to the latest finance deal), new engines, race track initiatives and more. When they write about the business, it’s a debate and a conversation. For example, a June 1, 2007 post featured a discussion started by the USA Today’s negative view of GM’s brands.15

Social Media Success Story: Getting in the FastLane

Foreign, and for the most part Japanese, automakers, have dominated American car sales, with the traditional Big 3 domestic manufacturers unable to respond. Increasingly, American buyers doubted the ability of the big three to counter foreign auto makers progress, and the blogosphere reflected this consumer attitude.

Bob Lutz, General Motors’ 73-year-old vice-chairman, wrote a detailed response to blog posts he had read criticizing the Saturn brand on a return flight from Europe. Lutz wanted to publish his opinion, and GM’s VP of Communications, Gary Grates, promptly exported the text to a Moveable Type template. This online post became the start of GM FastLane.16

GM had weighed blogging for some time, and experimented with the Small Block Engine Blog to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the engine. Lutz’s piece however, pushed the company a step further. Important bloggers, like Neville Hobson, heralded the FastLane Blog as a milestone because it represented the first time a senior manager of a non-tech, Fortune 500 Company was a primary contributor to a blog. In addition, the almost instantly achieved quality of high readership and large amount of feedback proved that a largely recognizable brand’s blog can thrive.17
FastLane had three distinct communities it served: car enthusiasts interested in developments at GM, normal, everyday customers, and investors, who want to know business and market information about the company. Each of these communities read FastLane and had individual bloggers posting on their own sites. FastLane served all of these parties with posts covering auto shows, Bob Lutz, business, cars and trucks, design, and LeMans. Additional social media includes podcasts and photo albums.3 4 Video blog entries are now posted from car shows and racing events. GM also runs multiple blogs on a variety of topics, inside and outside of the company.

GM has had to deal with tough issues since the blog has been running. In late 2005, it was revealed that they planned to fire close to 30,000 hourly workers in lieu of budget constraints, and in late-spring 2007, they were ridiculed for their opposition to a senate mandate of higher fuel economy in all U.S. cars. The blog though, has helped GM mange the backlash and communicate their point of view to their readers and the public at large.
Posts on FastLane are regularly attracting upwards of 20 comments as the popularity of the blog continues to grow. While there are plenty of argumentative comments posted by readers, there are even more positive ones. This open line of communication, where no one, regardless of views, are ignored, has helped GM’s financial reemergence.3 4

On March 7th 2007, Rasmussen Reports issued poll results showing GM being viewed favorably by 69% of Americans, 21% higher than the same figure taken the previous July. This compared to the other Big 3 automakers, Ford and Chrysler, who posted 57% and 51% favorability ratings respectively. 4 5 6 7

With an editorial mission that provides content for your community that is relevant to the organization’s day-to-day activities, a new media content strategy is born. And though the editorial mission may change over time as the new media initiative evolves, the mission guides content creation ensuring that it stays on track.

Also important are editorial standards that give general guidance for content creation. For example, encouraging cross-linking and references to other blogs, or avoiding attacks on others, etc. Videos should be limited to three minutes. These standards help your effort become consistent, and known to its community. While guidelines should be flexible, without them your content can wander.

Who and What

It’s important to assign voices to the new media effort. Who’s the content director? In some cases, the voice is that of the CEO, and in others, it’s a social media director. Increasingly, because of the incredible amount of resources required, it’s a team effort. Knowing who’s going to create content, and when, is essential for success. Further, communicating who the authors are to the community is equally important. Titles matter, but not that much. In many cases, an actual line manager can have as much credibility, if not more, than a top ranked executive.

Debbie Weil writes in her blog, BlogWrite, for CEOs, “GM’s FastLane Blog is managed by a team that includes Christopher Barger, GM’s director of global communications technology (love the title), along with Alicia Dorset, who is titled ‘blog editor.’ I know that GM also works closely with their PR/interactive agency, Haas MS & L on the blog.”

There is great debate about the authenticity of the voice. There is no shame in creating a team, someone who is assigned to blogging or creating podcasts. At the same time, having a CEO dictate news to a blogger or staff member who then creates the post for him enters a gray area. The reality is that CEOs don’t have time to write great amounts of blog posts, but having them participate as part of the content creation team makes the effort better.

The debate about disclosure is a touchy one. Because of the rise of blogs, and their roots in inherent transparency, many people on the Internet feel that full transparency of content creators should be disclosed. Others feel that business blogging is a natural evolution, and with that evolution comes a change in the unwritten rules. We recommend transparency.

“If a business leader ultimately does opt to have someone else handle the writing of the blog, he should disclose it,” said well-known marketing guru Shel Holtz. "What’s the harm in a statement like this on an executive blog: ‘Welcome to my blog. Several times each week, I articulate my thoughts to Mary Jones, who runs communications for the company, and she posts them here ensuring that I make the points I want to make. But rest assured, while Mary makes me sound better, the messages you read are mine; they come from my heart and I read all the comments myself.’ "

“Here’s what a blog is: A series of entries on a website that appear in reverse chronological order, per the standards of blogging software,” said Scott Baradell in a poignant Media Orchard entry. “Beyond that, have at it! Do what you want with the format! Change it. Expand it. Adapt it to your specific needs…if it’s of value, people will read it. If it’s a bunch of PR fluff, they won’t, no matter who composes the words. CEOs don’t have the time (or in many cases the writing skills) to prepare their own speeches, letters to shareholders and on and on. The same deal goes for blogs.”

Similarly, podcasts, maps and videos can be created or authored by anyone. In these instances, featuring the voice or shooting the person that is attributed with authorship virtually ends the ghostwriting issue; however, many execs will have their teams write the content. Failure to disclose creates cries of fake blogging and “astro turfing” across the blogosphere. This can really damage your corporate brand.

We believe offering a disclosure statement that there are teams behind the blog writers makes sense. Almost every major corporate blog has disclosed in some way (via interviews or disclosure statements) that they have a team supporting the effort behind the scenes.

Once you know who will create content, create a publishing schedule to ensure regular entries. If content is to be created by the organization, this should be a responsibility tied to job performance. Otherwise, content tends to fall to the wayside in favor of more important day to day tasks.

Similarly, it is important to know what the team is trying to accomplish, and that means creating measurement goals for the content. Knowing how many readers you want, how many views you need, what image you hope to convey, and which products need to see an uptick in sales, are critical to determining the success of the project. Ultimately, while creating value for a community remains the primary strategic thrust of new media creation, an organization must be able to measure its worth.

There are many ways an organization can measure its worth, ranging from Google analytics and RSS subscription management services, to increased brand awareness measurements from groups like Forrester research, or measuring sales increases. Whatever the case may be, an organization should not be intimidated by the newness of the media forms. Results can and must be measured.

“While blogging’s value can’t be measured precisely, marketers will find that calculating the return on investment is easier than it looks,” said Forrester Research’s, Charlene Li, “marketers can create a concrete picture of the key benefits, costs, and risks that blogging presents, and understand how they are likely to impact business goals.” 20

Inspire Your Community to Believe

By now, you know what the community wants, you have an editorial mission, you understand how to communicate to the audience, who’s going to do it, and what you want to achieve. Now it’s time to get out there and do it. That means creating great content delivered over a strong platform.

The dissemination platform, whether it is a blog or a more complicated social network, should be an important consideration. Invest the time, research the latest tagging, RSS, blogging and social media forms, as this is a serious initiative for your organization. There are many resources to research for best practices in this realm and we encourage you to explore them.21

In addition, bring professional resources to help create the initiative. Going cheap with a basic blogger template or a simple YouTube profile is not a great way to impress the community. It’s important to create a professional appearance representative of your brand that lets the community know you are serious about the initiative. Function and aesthetics need to combine here. At the same time, realize that the media form will likely evolve in a year or so and will need to be upgraded. Again, there are many resources for you to explore.

“Design does matter,” said renowned blogger Darren Rowse. “I think it is one strategy that can really lift a blog to the next level and help create a great first impression for a blog, especially in its early days.”

The same principles apply to any media form. Simple elegance in a site design, whether it be to host podcasts or to share videos, can help your effort rise above many other community contributors. But great design alone cannot work without great content. In new media, content is truly king. Nothing can replace superior content that appeals to the community. It will attract attention and support from other content producers and readers.
In a published Beth’s Blog discussion, Kevin Gamble revealed some of the reasons why his HighTouch effort has been so successful: “Our mantra has been (and will continue to be) that each page of content needs to stand alone. We also keep hammering that content needs to be content, not solely navigation, just related links that are directly related to the content.”

Consider the phenomena of Hillary Clinton’s theme song campaign. A simple, well-designed video blog or ‘vlog’ was created on YouTube, and was integrated into her main website and MySpace campaign. In some ways this was simpler but really no different in strategy than the rest of the early presidential campaigns. Her content was politically oriented and did not differentiate her from the competition.

Then came the campaign song initiative, a series of fun videos showing a humorous Hillary Clinton asking her fans to choose her 2008 theme song. This series of YouTube videos caused an incredible amount of publicity and excitement as well as general interest from YouTube viewers. 24 The campy “Pick My Campaign Song” campaign generated more than one million views and intelligently drew potential voters to the official Hillary site. Even better, it personalized a candidate who is often criticized for a cool demeanor. 25

“Hillary Rodham Clinton wants YouTube viewers to pick her campaign theme song and the response has been music to her ears,” said a related Associated Press article. “In both videos, Clinton sports a self-effacing attitude. She mocked her vocal abilities in the first post. The second features clips of people saying ‘this is ridiculous’ and ‘are you freaking kidding me?’ in response to the contest, along with Clinton making fun of some of the videos submitted.”

All in all, the Hillary YouTube effort demonstrated what great content can do in the right setting. Ultimately, regardless of what new media form it is, whatever the actual cause or topic may be, great content works in the right settings. Take the time to invest in creating great content that meets your editorial mission.

“There are no shortcuts to creating great content for your website,” said Jake Mathews in a 10e20 blog post. “The best content takes time to generate and is created the old fashion way with strong, factual research, drafting methods, revisions, and great presentation/layout for the Web. You must be an expert in your subject matter, have research sources at your fingertips and creative efforts to back you.” 27

Lastly, getting the community to believe means you must create content regularly and in a manner that your users come to expect. That means adhering to a schedule of posts, videos or podcasts (or photos or maps) and constantly preparing yourself for new entries. When vacations occur, content should be created in advance.

“Regular [content creation] yields increased traffic as people begin to realize that your Web site is a current source of information and if there’s a significant period of downtime, people will begin to unsubscribe from the feed,” said Teli Adlam on her blog, OptiNiche. “Developing a blogging schedule will vary based on your needs, your current schedule, and your ability to prioritize. And if you’re looking to become a professional blogger or turn your blog into a powerhouse, then you’ll probably need to work on it.” 28

Readers, viewers and listeners all lose interest if a new or old community member becomes irregular, or worse, infrequent, with their content. New media creation requires consistency as well as relevant, interesting content. In fact, many social media users will take a wait and see approach to new entrants in the community, just to see if they are legitimate.

The BobMeetsWorld Blog author says the number one reason he unsubscribes from blogs is their failure to publish regularly. “If I don’t see any updates in 3 to 4 days, I assume you must have stopped blogging and went on to do something useful with your life,” said Bob. “No reason for me to stick around anymore. I’m gone. Your spot is taken by someone’s feed that does provide me with new stuff.”

Failing to follow up on your commitment to the community, a commitment to participate and provide value, demonstrates failure. Such black eyes are hard to recover from. It’s better not to start at all than to end, or worse, slowly fade without warning. It will take three times the effort to rebuild a second new media effort that’s successful and the community will be wary of these repeated efforts.

Parting Thoughts

A company must determine what social media approach will yield the best results for them. Most companies choose a blog, but this is not always the correct choice. Assuming the community values the company’s offering, then that company must research providing additional value through its campaign.

Successful social media campaigns focus on the community’s interests while building value for the community via content and participation. It needs to be clear who is writing and what is trying to be accomplished, and that you are working to inspire the community to believe in the company and product.

Focus on the Community’s Interests

An individual company must focus on what people it wants to influence. The target groups may be large, or they could be small. However, people outside of these groups should be of no concern to the company.

Page rank or Technorati authority may not be something that a company should be concerned about. Through online research, a company must find where community members get information and how they like to be engaged. By knowing what the larger community likes, an organization is more likely to create social media that is of real value.

The Editorial Mission: Build Value for the Community

Ensure that content has value for the readers. An editorial mission guides content creation. By tailoring content in a creative way and understanding what value the company itself has to offer, a company will garner respect from its core readership instead of turning them off with traditional PR, marketing, or “day in the life”entries. Multiple categories of entries or subjects are often necessary in order to keep the subject matter somewhat fresh.

While there may be categorical diversity, it is important to stay relatively on track.

Who and What

Knowing who is responsible for creating content is vital for success. This doesn’t have to be the highest ranked individual in the company, but readers enjoy both an authenticity of voice and true authoritative information from the organization.
Companies should reveal who the main content creators are. The authors should view the effort as a core responsibility while working towards tangible goals, such as views or number of readers, to truly measure and work toward its effectiveness.

Inspire Your Community to Believe

There is a two-prong approach to drawing in and keeping readers, which involves creating new, interesting content, and creating it on a consistent basis. This requires diligence. One must be a constant lookout for unique or new media that can be used to add something extra to the social media initiative.

Notes

1 David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising (Vintage Books. New York, NY, 1995) p. 17.

2 Kami Watson Huyse, original interview, June 8, 2007.

3 Brian Oberkirch, “Insights that Matter from Brian Oberkirch, The Buzz Bin, May 1, 2007 (http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/blog/2007/05/01/insights-that-matter-from-brian-oberkirch/).

4 Steve Rubel, Blog Search is Dead and Google Killed It, Micropersuasion

(http://www.micropersuasion.com/2007/05/blog_search_is_.html)

5 Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams, Wikinomics, Portfolio Publishing (New York, NY: 2006), p. 80.

6 Toby Bloomberg, original interview, June 9, 2007.

7 Mario Sundar, Face Book Polls: Market Research Meets Social Networks, Marketing Nirvana, June 3, 2007 (http://mariosundar.wordpress.com/2007/06/03/facebook-polls-market-research-meets-social-networks/).

8 David Meerman Scott, The New Rules of Marketing & PR, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (Hoboken, New Jersey: 2007), p. 38.

9 Chris Dorobek, FCW Insider Chris Dorobek Discusses Federal Blogs and Social Media, The Buzz Bin, June 12, 2007 (http://www.livingstonbuzz.com/blog/2007/06/12/fcw-insider-chris-dorobek-on-federal-social-media/).

10 Kevin Dugan and Richard Laermer, The Bad Pitch Blog, (http://badpitch.blogspot.com/).

11 Todd Defren, Participation is Marketing, PR Squared, May 24, 2007 (http://www.pr-squared.com/2007/05/participation_is_marketing.html).

12 Rich Becker, Copywrite, Ink., Ordering Up Ethics: Flogs, Blogs and Posers, July 27, 2007 (http://copywriteink.blogspot.com/2007/07/ordering-up-ethics-flogs-blogs-and.html).

13 Scott Baradell, For God’s Sake Do Not Try and Tell Us What a Blog Is, Media Orchard, May 2, 2007 (http://www.ideagrove.com/blog2007_05_01_archive.html#2306700750415198097).

14 GM’s Fastlane (http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/).

15 Alicia Dorset, Update: Questioning Our Brand Strategy, GM’s Fastlane, June 1 (http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/archives/2007/06/update_question_1.html).

16 Debbie Weil, How GM’s Fastlane blog was born. BlogWrite for CEOs: The Blog. 6/8/2005. http://blogwrite.blogs.com/blogwrite/2005/06/how_gms_fastlan.html

17 Neville Hobson, An open conversation with General Motors. NevOn. 2/22/2005. http://www.nevon.net/nevon/2005/02/an_open_convers.html.

18 Shel Holtz, Weighing in on the Ghost Blogging Debate, A Shel of my Former Self, June 5, 2007 (http://blog.holtz.com/index.php/weblog/comments/weighing_in_on_the_ghost_blogging_debate/).

19 Scott Baradell, For God’s Sake Do Not Try and Tell Us What a Blog Is, Media Orchard, May 2, 2007 (http://www.ideagrove.com/blog/2007_05_01_archive.html#2306700750415198097).

20 Charlene Li, New ROI of Blogging Report, The Groundswell, January 25, 2007 (http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli/2007/01/new_roi_of_blog.html).

21 We have included a blog roll and list of books at the end of this book to help you in these and other aspects of social marketing media.

22 Darren Rowse, Does Blog Design Matter In The Early Stages of a Blog, ProBlogger, June 5, 2007 (http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/06/05/does-blog-design-matter-in-the-early-stages-of-a-blog/).

23 Beth Kanter, Measuring Your Blog’s Outcomes Beth’s Blog, May 2007 (http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2007/05/measuring_your_.html).

24 CBCNet, Hillary Clinton asks YouTube users to pick campaign song, CBCNet, May 6, 2007 (http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/05/26/clinton-youtube-song.html).

25 Hillary Clinton, Pick My Campaign Song: Part 2, Hillary for President, (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LClOHUFUC5g&mode=user&search=).

26 Associated Press, Clinton asks YouTube Users for Song Help, Boston Herald, May 26, 2007 (http://news.bostonherald.com/politics/view.bg?articleid=1003282).

27 Jake Matthews, “10 Helpful Hints for Creating Strong Web site Content,” May 1, 2007 (http://www.10e20.com/2007/05/01/10-helpful-hints-for-creating-strong-web-site-content).

28 Teli Adlam, “Make Time for Blogging with a Schedule,” The OptiNice Blog, June 4 (http://www.optiniche.com/blog/286/make-time-for-blogging-with-a-schedule/).

29 “Reasons I Unsubscribe from Your Blog,” Bob Meets World, June 2, 2007 (http://bobmeetsworld.com/5-reasons-i-unsubscribed-from-your-blog/).

About the Authors:

Geoff Livingston has worked as a marketing strategist in the Washington, DC region for 14 years. Dubbed a “local blogging guru” by the Washington Post, Geoff’s Buzz Bin blog is nationally recognized, and is the top ranked independent PR blog in the Washington, DC region. He successfully launched FortiusOne’s GeoCommons using an aggressive social media strategy, and marketed Godsmack lead singer Sully Erna’s bio using a diversified My Space and blogosphere campaign. Geoff’s book on new media Now is Gone was released last autumn by Bartleby Press. He creates marketing strategy, media relations, branding and Internet marketing campaigns for public and private organizations. Some of his experiences include work for AT&T, the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Bartleby Books, BEA Systems, Hughes Network Systems, ManTech, the Washington Nationals, Intelsat, Verizon Wireless and many others.

Brian Solis is Principal of FutureWorks, an award-winning PR agency in Silicon Valley. Solis blogs at PR2.0, bub.blicio.us, WebProNews, and regularly contributes PR and tech insight to industry publications. Solis is co-founder of the Social Media Club, is an original member of the Media 2.0 Workgroup, and also is a contributor to the Social Media Collective and ConversationalMedia.org.