Two days ago a co-worker came to me and asked me for advice on how to use Facebook as a recruiting tool. While he had already begun utilizing it, he wanted some advice on ways to more efficiently search through people. In the course of discussion he asked me how to recruit more people like myself, given that I fall within the demographic that they are targeting for employment. I quickly explained to him that through the utilization of blogs and social networks we could attract more qualified individuals. After providing some additional feedback I left and said I would get back to him with any other ideas that I came up with.

Since then I have been thinking more about what would help recruit top notch candidates for employment. I came to the conclusion that transparency is critical. While I’ve read about the necessity of transparency in books like “Naked Conversations,” I had never realized the true impact, until today. How can companies attract new graduates that have spent their college careers on social networks, being granted practically unfiltered access to all of their friends social interactions through a story of pictures and other public statements? Well, there is no option but to become equally transparent.

I concluded that the best way to attract the “generation me” crowd that will soon contribute to the creative class in society, is to break down all barriers and grant them access to see the people that make up a company. I suggested that all of my co-workers on the digital team should be on Facebook with our profiles filled and have at least a few pictures. People connect with people, not with companies. If your company can illustrate that it is composed of fun, intelligent and creative individuals, I am willing to bet that there is a greater chance of attracting the people that you want to hire.

Prior to the internet, it was much more difficult for job seekers to view the people that made up a company. Instead, they went to those companies that had a solid reputation. Times have changed and companies need to open up. There is a revolution taking place that we are slowly beginning to see the impact of. The world has become more transparent, and as a result companies will need to become transparent as well if they intent to recruit the younger generation.

When Facebook launched its new platform last week, a new era of interacting online was started. Suddenly companies can have immediate access to a network of over 25 million users which is growing at an insane rate. Within one day, new startups can gain traffic that was previously accessible to only those that had the money for major PR and marketing campaigns at launch time. With such benefits available to startups, there is no choice but to hop on the bandwagon and offer a Facebook application to their users. What is the end result of all these startups hopping on board? David Sacks points out:

The potential for Facebook to layer on any feature whose value increases with the participation of friends is an incredibly broad canvas for a portal. Moreover, as each new application gains acceptance, it enriches the overall value of the network and makes it incrementally more likely that the next application will be tried. Much of what we know as “Web 2.0″ will eventually be rebuilt on top of Facebook.

So as companies build applications for Facebook, the question becomes, will users travel away from Facebook to view the sites of application creators? In my own opinion the answer for this depends on what type of application is being built. Many users will choose to stick to the confines of Facebook as it is a platform that they feel comfortable with. Others will venture out and sign up for new sites that will help enrich their experience. In either circumstance, the user will still come back to Facebook. As Fortune points out:

Today, social networking is fragmented. There are networks for dating, for philanthropy, for pet owners, for parents. But each has its own ways for members to register, describe themselves, communicate, and interact. Facebook aims to make much of that unnecessary. It will provide the underlying services - a platform - and offer access to its prerecruited pool of members. It will retain some online real estate and will still generate the lion’s share of its revenue from advertising.

Ultimately the goal is to make a start page for users that is so useful, they don’t need to go anywhere else. Why go to a news site when it comes to you? Why go to your bank’s site when you can view your balance right from your start page? If Facebook can bring everything directly to the user and force the other sites to be simply content providers, it becomes an easier interaction for the user and a better situation for Facebook. Facebook has gone an taken existing concepts (startpages, rss feeds, etc) and has now brought it to the masses. Internet users that once had no idea what all of these new technologies are about, will now experience the benefits of existing technologies even if they don’t understand how they work because all they need to do is click “Add Application”.

So back to the initial question. Is there any point in launching your own social application? In the long run, probably not. All sites will eventually become content providers that allow users to decide for themselves how they are going consume information. RSS feeds and OPML are only the beginning of such technologies. While this is going to take time to manifest, in the foreseeable future you are going to have access to all the information you want right at your fingertips, all from one page. While search will still be necessary to find new sources of content, users will be able to avoid navigation the web on a daily basis to consume all the information that they want. While its not going to happen immediately, Facebook has just taken a huge step in that direction.

The buzz around the tech blogosphere the past few days has been related to the blow-up on Digg. If you haven’t heard about it, then you have been living under a rock. For those that like to seek shelter under various stones I will provide you with a quick overview. Chester Millisock, an avid Digg user, dugg an article that published the HD-DVD processing key that you can use to decrypt and play most HD-DVD movies in Linux. Soon after it was published, Digg received a cease and desist notice from the owners of the intellectual property and they complied. What ensued was a chaotic response by the Digg community. Suddenly Digg was swamped with more articles that posted the HD-DVD processing key then they could bury. There was no way to stop it. The result? Digg caved in and Kevin Rose posted the following statement:

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

At least we died trying? That sounds a little ridiculous to me. The real problem is that beyond a certain point, social networks become controlled by the users rather than the moderators. Without a highly automated moderating system, there is no chance that a site can effectively monitor everything being posted with its community.

I’ve witnessed the problem first hand at the first startup that I worked for. After coming into work one day, I learned about a community participant that was harassing others. A few members of the community felt threatened and communicated their problem to us. The member did cross the line, and he was effectively banned. At the time, that community contained under 10,000 users. I can’t imagine trying to control a community of millions. Think of the troubles that MySpace faces, especially when it comes to pedophilia. The future of social networks is effective automated monitoring programs that don’t limit people’s freedom of speech.

In this case, I don’t think Digg should have buried the article. There’s no point. If Digg is at risk of being sued, then Google should be at risk also. Try googling “hd-dvd processing key”. Hundreds of thousands of pages show up, many of which include the key in the title or body of the page. The bottom line is that there will always be hackers and crackers that try to break protections, and they will also post their results on the web. This is a fact of life. Let alone, how many people really know what to do with the HD-DVD processing key anyways? There will be a continuing struggle between industry and the social web, this is just another case study in the relationship between the two.

Over the past few days I’ve been thinking about Rohit Bhargava’s “5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO)”. While it was published last August, it still can be utilized today and will continue to have an impact into the future. My conclusion from the post? Social Media Optimization means being a good community participant. By producing valuable content that others can easily consume and promote you will become better optimized. The most important step in SMO is to help promote others and participate in the conversation. This can be done by linking to sources in your articles as well as commenting on interesting posts on other people’s blogs. It is as simple as that.

The same rules exist outside of the digital world. When you tell a joke that your friend told you, you should probably state where you obtained the joke from. A better example would be spreading rumors. You always need to say where you obtained your information. Well in the blogosphere the same thing goes. Pay respect to those that inform you and drop a link. Continue to be a part of the community on an ongoing basis. By participating in conversation on other people’s blogs, you show that you care about what they write as well as show that you have something useful to add to the conversation. Later, when people are looking for interesting dialogue, they will come visit your site.

Mass marketing has become so prevalent that it has rapidly lost its effectiveness. Gone are the days where a national marketing campaign provides sufficient influence on your consumers to convince them to purchase your product. As the web expands personal communication has become more important. The web has empowered individuals by increasing their reach. Your customers can read through the material nonsense that large marketers force down their throats via tv ads and newspaper ads in which the consumer has a huge smile on their face. The most influential marketing strategy has become guerrilla marketing. But still, guerrilla marketing has even garnered negative rapport as marketers have begun to invade individual’s personal relationships. So how do you connect to your customers?

You need to build genuine personal relationships with your customers. While this may not be the case for commodities, this is the primary case for the vast majority of services being offered. As you build these relationships with individuals they will in turn tell their friends and suddenly your marketing efforts will have paid off. You can reach out to more individuals via blogs and alternative forms of social media.

It’s nothing new, in one sense. The only advertising that was ever truly effective was word of mouth, which is nothing more than conversation. Now word of mouth has gone global. The one-to-many scope that technology brought to mass production and then mass marketing, which producers have enjoyed for two hundred years, is now available to customers. And they’re eager to make up for lost time. -Cluetrain Manifesto

You may even be able to generate some traffic to your blog and various web sites via mass marketing, but the impact from these large marketing campaigns will be nowhere near the response you receive from developing geuine relationships. Trust me, I have seen a number of national television advertising campaigns by Fortune 500 companies only generate 50 leads to a site. Some will say that it’s because their ads were bad. This may be true, but I’ve witnessed the result of successful word of mouth campaigns that would dwarf any national mainstream media campaign. The new marketplace is primarily responsive to relationship marketing. So get out there and start building new relationships!

I spent a large portion of last evening reading a pretty interesting book, “The Cluetrain Manifesto”. Written back in 2000, the book describes the major impact that the internet (especially social media in particular) will have on business. It is a phenomenal description of what we are witnessing take place on the web and in the business world today. What I find to be particularly impressive about this book, is the relevance that it still holds even though it was published over 6 years ago.

This book hit home with me as social media has become a focus of mine over the past year. What I find to be particularly fascinating is how many corporations and communications professionals are still very much clueless about the impact that social media is having. When you can readily access published military intelligence or buzz about rats in a store it is no wonder that corporations and government are increasingly nervous about their lack of control in the marketplace and media. As a result, the growing impact of social media will require greater resources to be dedicated to managing social media interaction. All bloggers will tell you how to succeed: join the conversation. For corporations, joining the conversation can be a daunting task depending on organization size and the relative importance of internal information. Thus the need for individuals who are in charge of such activities.

After a little research I was able to come up with companies that have already filled this position. Eastwick Communications recently appointed an employee to Vice President of Emerging Media. A year ago, PRWeb created a position titled Vice President of Social Media. I believe these companies are early adopters and we will see this position become increasingly popular within organizations. As social media continues to expand, so will the need for oversight and strategy.

Tonight I attended my first Social Media Club ever. It was a great experience. I met a lot of wonderful people and engaged some great conversation. The main topic of discussion was supposed to be social media measurement but much of the conversation revolved around other topics. Topics discussed included the Viacom lawsuit against Google (as I wrote about a couple weeks ago), and second life. I actually was quite surprised that Second Life was still such a major topic of discussion. In all honesty, I think the PR industry is slightly obsessed with Second Life, perhaps rightly so.

In terms of social media measurement, I learned that it is truly an emerging industry that is still seeking leadership. The PR industry is still trying to adapt to the rapidly changing media environment. In order to advance social media measurement, there will need to be though leaders and advocates of social media measurement within the public relations and communication industry. Just like thought leaders are required for the progression of OpenID, such is the case of social media measurement and monitoring. All in all, my experience with social media club was a positive one and I will definitely attend it again.

On Thursday I talked about a one day movement called “Bum Rush the Charts”. This movement was an example of a failed social media marketing campaign. What exactly happened? Bum Rush the Charts did not reach out to the proper people who could make the movement a success. If you want to succeed at social media marketing, then you need to create a significant amount of buzz. Prior to the Bum Rush the Charts day, there was practically no buzz. As the Alexa chart illustrates, there was very little site traffic prior to the day of the Bum Rush. While the traffic wasn’t groundbreaking, it was fairly significant on the day of the event (over 17,000 visitors), so something else must have prevented the movement from being a success.

Simply put, the creators of the movement underestimated the sales volume of itunes. With Bum Rush the Charts obtaining close to 18,000 visitors on the day of the event, I would guess that they sold no more than 10,000 units. I had to work hard to convince friends of mine to purchase the song, and it was only 99 cents! Bottom line, the marketing was not done properly. No A-list bloggers covered the event, there was some press coverage but not enough, and apparently 99 cents was a fairly significant hurdle for some people.

Is it possible for a campaign like this to be a success? Yes, but it takes a concerted effort and an amalgam of marketing channels. I have been inspired by the challenge, and am working on putting something together to make a movement that succeeds. If you have any suggestions please let me know!

I’ve begun working on a new system for social media monitoring. While I can’t speak about the specific details on how the system will work, there are some things that I’ve concluded in the process of building the system. There are three components to effective social media measurement:

1. Hyperlinks - Hyperlinks are what determine the buzz on the web. Sites such as Techmeme and Megite perform this task superbly. Google already determined years ago that hyperlinks are the way to go.
2. Weighting System - This is the critical component that differentiates one monitoring system from the next. By creating a unique combination of factors, each resource can be weighted effectively. One example of this is Google’s PageRank^TM. Other examples include the Alexa rating and the Technorati rating.
3. Time - Most of the value in publishing is timeliness. If I’m reading news that is days old (or event minutes old sometimes), it is practically of no value. As a result time is the final factor weighing in on social media monitoring/measurement.

The market for social media monitoring and measurement is going to continue to boom. As people are restricted to the amount of attention they can dedicate to monitoring, more effective filtering solutions will become prevalent.

This morning I received an email notifying me of the next Social Media Club event happening in Washington, DC. The topic being discussed is social media measurement. This topic is of great interest to me currently as it is part of my job. Over the past few days I have been spending a lot of time reading about PR measurement. I plan on continuing my research in PR measurement and as a result I have added it as a category to my blog. I will still continue to cover web 2.0 topics as well but am adding a little PR into the mix. In this entry I will discuss what PR measurement and social media measurement are and why they are important. I will also briefly touch on the problems that PR measurement professionals face.

What is PR Measurement?
Simply put, PR measurement is a method of measuring the impact of all of an organization’s public relations activities which includes but is not limited to public affairs, media relations, and social media activities.

What is Social Media Measurement?
Social media measurement is simply a subset of PR measurement. The goal of social media measurement is to monitor and measure the buzz surrounding any particular topic (most often a brand or specific product) within all forms of social media (blogs, forums, wikis, etc).

Recently I have been trying to come up with an effective system for monitoring social media sources that would enable a company representative to become active in conversations that they deem important. There are many companies that currently offer similar services such as Nielsen’s BuzzMetrics, Cymfony, and Motive Quest. All of these services enable companies to learn more about their customers. As I read more about these services, I also become increasingly skeptical of the actual value provided to the companies. Ultimately the real value is in being able to see what customers really think about your product or brand. In contrast to the past where you would fill out a survey or call a hotline to most likely voice a complaint, consumers are now voluntarily voicing both praise and criticism of their favorite brands and products online. Additionally, companies now have the ability to join the conversation and talk directly with the consumers. While PR measurement attempts to quantitatively describe the effects of all of a company’s PR activities, social media measurement sticks to those activities that are online. As a result of having digital records of people’s opinions, social media measurement generates better statistics than general PR measurement which doesn’t have direct access to the media viewers.

While this entry is simply my general assessment of the PR measurement industry, I would like to make one assertion. Effective social media measurement is attainable via effective filtering processes. Companies are currently experiencing an explosion in access to customer insight. As a result, they are attempting to monitor all the buzz taking place and appropriately respond to as many comments as possible. Ultimately, the process has begun to burn out both executives and the PR professionals who monitor social media. What needs to be developed is a system that allows companies to monitor the buzz while optimizing their time spent on the social media conversations. For large corporations, there is not enough resources to respond to every single customer’s concern that is voiced online, but there is an optimal balance between monitoring, conversation participation, and company action. Where that optimal point is differs for each company.

Today I was reading an interesting article by Dion Hinchcliffe about the emergence of mass social media. Dion gives an effective overview of what social media is and how it’s making a difference (in addition to providing the beautiful diagram above). He also outlines a few key components of social media:

1. Communication in the form of conversation, not monologue. - I discussed this yesterday in my article, Democracy 2.0. Blogs are enabling people to become part of a conversation rather than just having content forced at them.
2. Participants are people not organizations.
3. Honesty and transparency are core values.
4. Push not pull. - People now search for content they are interested in rather than having the media pushed at them.
5. Distribution instead of centralization. - While the sources of content may be biased now, the plethora of content sources enable readers to seek multiple viewpoints.

If you want to read more about social media, I suggest checking out Spannerworks report on social media. I can assure you that you will be hearing more about the impact of social media on this blog in the future.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the impact that the internet is having on both consumers and constituents (basically all citizens). There is a revolution taking place across the country from the comfort of our own homes. I started to realize this revolution while reading “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson. I started the boook a few weeks back and it has been weaving it’s way into my thoughts since I began. If you are involved in PR, Marketing, Business, or anything related to the Internet (basically everyone), you should read this book.

There are two areas that I have been thinking about in regards to how the internet is making an impact: 1) the relationship between businesses and consumers, and 2) the relationship between congress people and constituents. I will briefly touch on both these topics, with more elaboration to come in the future.

Businesses and Consumers
Have you ever realized that often times there is a phone number and address on most of the products your purchase, asking for your feedback? Right now I’m looking at a Pop-Secret box of popcorn that holds “The Red Sppon Promise”. According to the box, “The Red Spoon is my promise of great taste, quality, and convenience. This is a product you and your family will enjoy. I guarantee it.” I’ve seen similar statements on other products as well. Have you ever called these numbers? I haven’t. Prior to the internet, this was the only way that consumers could connect with their favorite brands. Nowadays, consumers can get on their computer and blog about their experiences with the companies that are a part of their life. Sometimes they can even access a company’s blog and comment on a specific product. Their voice will be heard immediately.

The changing interaction between consumers and brands is pretty revolutionary. Suddenly, the “free market” has become the most democratic system of all (if it wasn’t already). As they have always been able to, consumers can choose what products to purchase. This is their “vote” in the free market. The only difference now is that consumers have access to a broader product offering as illustrated by “the long tail”. Additionally, consumers now have the ability to mold the products that companies provide to them through direct conversations. These direct conversations are taking place on wikis and blogs across the internet. This is in contrast to before when corporations simply used focus groups to determine where a product would be placed within a market, and then continued to heavily market each of the new products. Now we are experiencing a changing landscape, especially in marketing and PR. In The Long Tail, Chris Anderson states:

We’re entering an era of radical change for marketers. Faith in advertising and the institutions that pay for it is waning, while faith in individuals is on the rise. Peers trust peers. Top-down messaging is losing traction, while bottom-up buzz is gaining power. Dell spends hundreds of millions each year on promoting its quality and customer services, but if you Gooogle “dell hell” you’ll get 55,000 pages of results. Even the word “dell” returns customer complaints by the second page of results. The same inversion of power is now chaning the marketing game for everything from individual products to people. The collective now controls the message.

Similarly, Shel Israel states on his blog:

What is a great matter, if you are in the PR proffesion is that you will not succeed if you focus on smiling and dialing a media list of strangers, if you are intent in inject hubris into what you have to say or write. If you think you can succeed by being just cute or clever, you are living in the wrong Era.

Today, you need to join the conversation. You are part of the news distribution system, not just for your clients, but for the community where your clients would like to flourish.

We are now in conversational era. Suddenly, consumers have been given the majority of control. Slowly, consumers are starting to take advantage of it.

Congress People and Constituents
As you know, the United States is a representative democracy, providing the representatives that we elect with the power to determine what is right for the people. Once elected, the representatives interact with intermediaries, not constituents to determine what decisions should be made on key legislation. According to Utah State Representative, Steve Urquhart:

In politics, intermediaries tightly control information. Those intermediaries are (1) special interest groups, (2) the media, and (3) bureaucrats. There’s nothing wrong with the fact that those three entities exist; they can be quite helpful in proper dosage. The problem is the overwhelming degree to which those intermediaries filter content and control political dialogue.

As a solution to the problem, Rep. Urquhart has helped create Politicopia (thanks for showing this to me Leslie). According to Rep. Urquhart:

Politicopia will improve people’s access to information in my state, Utah, by presenting a wiki-based forum for the compilation and presentation of information on actual bills pending before the Legislature. If a citizen wants to learn about an issue and shape the dialogue, Politicopia will provide a quick and solid handle on the process — without the intermediaries filter. And if a legislator wants to hear unfiltered suggestions from interested citizens — instead of mainly hearing from organized special interests — Politicopia will give him or her a new source of input.

While representatives still have the power to choose where they get their information from, one can hope that over time, more information will come directly from the citizens, rather than biased power players. As I mentioned last week, Hillary Clinton turned to Yahoo answers to get the input of the people. While I’m sure much of this may be a political stunt as she moves toward becoming a Presidential nominee, it is still a good illustration of how new technology can impact the relationship between constituents and their representatives.

In conclusion, new technologies developed for the internet have exploited the internet’s true democratic nature. I believe that this is the beginning of a revolution, and we haven’t begun to see the true impact. As a whole, I am hopeful for what the future brings as people begin to embrace the technologies that are provided to them. Want to learn more about the revolution? I suggest heading over to the Media 2.0 Workgroup to read work from other bloggers that are documenting the phenomena of democratic participation on the web.