Danny Brown

podcaster - author - creator

Archives for June 2011

The Funny Thing About Content Sharing

evil monkey

Over at her blog, PR pro Kellye Crane shares why she doesn’t like the content sharing platform Triberr. It’s an alternate view to ones shared by Gini Dietrich and Shonali Burke. It’s an interesting read, and offers some good points on why it’s not for folks like Kellye.

However, there’s one thing that stands out in both the post and some of the comments – the (perceived) misunderstanding that Triberr is an evil thing that takes away transparency and authenticity, and makes social media less social.

Because tools don’t take away anything – people do.

Triberr – much like anything that automates your social media streams – has a bunch of options that allows you to curate how you feed blog posts into your Twitter stream. This means you can automatically share people you would anyway, or have a manual setting to moderate before you curate.?You can also delete posts you don’t feel are useful to your followers.

So, basically, any annoyance someone has with Triberr – or similar tools – is really an annoyance with the person and how they’re sharing content.

But then that’s where the funny thing about content sharing comes in.

It’s primarily about the content you enjoyed.

That’s why you share – because you enjoyed it, and feel it deserves a wider audience. That’s not to say that your followers or connections will enjoy it too. You hope they will, but they might think you’ve lost your marbles for sharing something that is banal (to them).

But that doesn’t really matter. Because you enjoyed it, and your share is a thank you to the writer, not your connections.

So with that in mind, is any kind of sharing – automated or otherwise – less authentic or social because someone doesn’t like how it’s being shared?

Or are we missing the point on content sharing a little, and thinking it should always be for our benefit, when it’s simply because someone enjoyed something someone else wrote?

image: Azrasta

The Art of Being an Asshat

asshat

Sometimes you read something, or you hear something, and it just makes you stop and say, “Seriously?!?”.

Often this is from a pitch selling a company’s products or services. It can be from the company directly, or it can be from their marketing or PR agency.

Note – there are many great PR and marketing agencies out there doing great work. This just makes the crappy ones stand out even more.

So it was when I heard about this pitch. Sent to Lani Rosales, Editor-in-Chief of AGBeat, it’s a great example of either crass stupidity or outright superiority. Here’s the full exchange:

On Fri, June 17, 2011 at 5:31 AM,?Joseph Smith?<josephsmith99over@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Lani,

I would like to send you our press release but I will need you to personally sign a?non disclosure agreement?first.

Signed,

JS

On Fri, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM, Lani Rosales <lani.rosales@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Joseph, I didn’t catch the company name?

LR

On Fri, June 17, 2011 at 11:01 AM, Joseph Smith <josephsmith99over@gmail.com> wrote:

You are required to sign an NDA prior to any communication with me or my client.

On Fri, June 17, 2011 at 11:08 AM, Lani Rosales <lani.rosales@gmail.com> wrote:

Joseph,

I am happy to sign any NDA that we deem to have merit but cannot do so without knowing basic details like a company name. I’m sure you don’t mean to waste my time and I certainly don’t intend on wasting yours, so company name or it didn’t happen.

LR

On Fri, June 17, 2011 at 11:20 AM, Joseph Smith <josephsmith99over@gmail.com> wrote:

[blank email with NDA attached, naming company as “Company Name Withheld”]

On Fri, June 17, 2011 at 11:21 AM, Lani Rosales <lani.rosales@gmail.com> wrote:

Joseph,

I am not authorized to sign that as I have made clear and I feel that you are aware. When you are prepared to share your company name or any basic hints of information, you have my email, otherwise please do not waste any more of my time.

LR

On Fri, June 17, 2011 at 11:25 AM, Joseph Smith <josephsmith99over@gmail.com> wrote:

Lani, you will be missing out on an incredible opportonity [sic] as we have not approached any other news outlet. Perhaps your competitor would be more interested. We will not forget your lack of kindness.

Most sincerely,

Joseph

I have to admit, when I read it, I thought Lani was extremely professional in her patience – I would have really been tempted to have some fun. Something about Joseph signing my NDA about his mom and girlfriend, and the polaroids from Stripper Joe’s…

Seriously, though, is this what we’ve now come to? Asking people to sign a non-disclosure agreement before they even know what they’re signing up for? And then ignoring the person you want to write about you, and sending the NDA anyway? Then, just to top it off, basically using a threat as a closing statement?

No wonder the PR industry gets such a tough time (though, to be honest, I’m wary of this even coming from a PR agency, but it’s not impossible).

Unfortunately, “Joseph Smith” is the John Doe of the communications industry, as a reverse email search doesn’t bring up any information about him. Probably just as well – it’d be pretty embarrassing to find he’s a member of your PR team or business.

So, some simple tips when looking to get people and publications to write about you.

  • Respect their time and intelligence.
  • Don’t be bolshy.
  • Don’t come across as asshat-ish as Joseph Smith.
  • NDA’s are all well and good, but you need to let us know who we’re being approached about first.
  • Did I mention don’t be an asshat?

Honestly, it’s not all that hard. And you’re more than likely to get the kind of promotion you’re after…

image: Lh3

Make Yourself An Influencer By Playing The Klout +K Game

A lot of people continue to talk about Klout and whether it’s something to take note of, or simply another tool that’s fun to use but doesn’t offer real value.

Personally, I’m in the second camp. Probably because I don’t feel you can measure influence purely by what you do online, and most definitely because there are so many variations that make up a single decision that – to me – it’s impossible to say what influenced that decision the most.

But whether you think Klout has value or not, it’s now a lot of fun – because you can game the system and show its flaws, and this is all done by one of Klout’s own tools, the new +K option.

The +K option allows you to vote for people’s expertise on a certain topic. The idea is, the more votes someone gets on a topic, the more recognized they are by Klout as an expert in that field. Which, as the video below shows, can lead to completely ridiculous results .

So, yeah – well done, Klout, for showing your flaws better than any critic could. Now that deserves a +K!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I387sH_9yMY

Note: Big props to Dino Dogan for the idea of this mock interview to highlight how to game Klout.

American Express and Foursquare – So What?

meh

Over at Fast Company, there’s a post about the American Express partnership with Foursquare. While the announcement is interesting, the direction that Fast Company runs with the article is less so.

According to Fast Company, the AMEX/FourSquare deal?“…might finally give us some hard evidence as to whether social media is a worthwhile investment for merchants and marketers.”

Ummm… riiiiigghht.

I’m not sure where Fast Company has – or hasn’t – been looking, but agencies, consultants and business owners have been proving the ROI (return on investment) for a while now.

The Easy Social Media Management Example

Lauren McMullen is the owner of Easy Social Media Management, a consultancy that helps small businesses understand social media and how it can help their bottom line. Her agency was recently involved in a book launch for an anthology called Align, Expand and Succeed – Shifting the Paradigm of Entrepreneurial Success.

The book featured 40 authors, and over a six-month period Lauren used the social networks of the authors and the publisher to build awareness around the impending publication. This included blogs, YouTube interviews, and article directory promotions.

Because of this, the book became an Amazon bestseller on the morning of launch, and held the number one position in the four categories it was targeted to.

The Willis eTech Ltd. Example

John Willis is the founder and owner of Willis eTech Ltd., a small business offering photography, video and websites for other small businesses based in Okanagan, BC.

While flying over the newly-opened Sparkling Hills resort in Vernon, BC, John took some pictures of the resort and uploaded them to his TwitPic account. He tweeted the owner of the area where Sparkling Hills had opened their resort, and was invited to contact them.

That led to a bunch of photography and media projects for John’s company, and his use of other social media platforms saw him become recognized as the go-to guy in his area for social media and how it can be used to drive business. He speaks at local Chamber of Commerce events as well as seminars, and trains businesses on how they can effectively use social media.

Why the AMEX / Foursquare Deal Isn’t All That

These are just two examples. If you want others, just type in?“social media roi success stories” to Google and you’ll find just under 3,000 results. Now, that may not sound much in the grand scheme of things, especially when other Google searches often result in millions of examples.

But that’s more than likely to do with the fact that instead of writing about how the ROI of social media is real, most businesses and agencies are just getting on with proving it to their clients, as opposed to trying to show how great they are in public.

They’re making results happen every single day – which is why the Fast Company angle means less than they might have hoped for.

For instance, according to the article, one of the “big wins” with the deal is that Foursquare will “…help merchants foster customer loyalty.” By encouraging check-ins and rewards, and the ability to tie back into your AMEX card, it means more people will shop at your location.

Great stuff. Except for one major problem – you don’t have to be at a location to check in. You don’t have to physically be there to become a Mayor and reap the rewards for it (like a free meal, or a discount on your clothing, etc).

My house is about 5 miles away from my office. Yet, by not checking in anywhere when I leave the office, I can be at home and check into my office because of the way Foursquare caches my last check-in.

Think about that from the point of view of a restaurant owner. They decide to offer a free meal and drink to the Mayor of their restaurant. I see that, so start checking in, even though I’ve never been there before in my life. I become Mayor, get my free meal and drink, don’t pay a thing and leave.

I then get my friends to do the same, and between us we constantly force the restaurant owner to give us free meals and drinks. But we never go to that restaurant as paying customers.

So… where’s the loyalty building in that?

Until location-based services can actually lock you down somewhere and make it impossible for you to check in somewhere unless you’re there, you’re not going to build loyalty through offers. You will, however, lose the vendor money – and that doesn’t build loyalty or ROI.

image: Slightlynorth

So You’re Having a Bad Day

bad day

We all have them. Bad days that make us wonder why we do what we do, whether in our own business or for our employer.

Or we wonder why we’re with our partners when we have an argument. Or we see the size of our email inbox and wish we could just skip the day and begin again tomorrow.

But are we really having such a bad day?

I took my dogs out for a walk this morning, and one of them crapped on a snail. I mean, seriously – how bad does your day have to be to look up and find that someone is shitting on your house?

So, yeah, we may be having bad days. But do they compare to a child beaten and abused by their parents, or bullied at school?

Do they compare to a good, law-abiding person fighting terminal illness and wondering why that rapist lived to 97?

Do they compare to people that are jailed and tortured for wanting to live in a democracy?

Maybe we feel like nothing can be worse than the day we’re currently having. But if all we have to complain about is the noise of social media, or the commute to work, or the amount of emails we still have to answer, or the waitress not getting our drink order right, or a myriad of other things, ask yourself one thing.

Is it really all that bad?

image: DanRhett