Logic+Emotion

Please Steal This Idea

Not long ago, I found myself talking with several clients about a trend I felt would truly impact their business. Social Sharing. There's no brilliance to identifying this as a meaningful trend, we see social sharing everywhere. In the real world and most recently on networks as people not only share what they are doing, but what they are reading, listening to, and even purchasing.

I've made suggestions multiple times to whoever would listen that they should take another look at their Website and integrate social sharing (beyond content and more toward commerce). For example if you are even considering buying a product, you should be able to tell your friends about it. If you booked a vacation or a hotel room with a view—same thing. If you recommend a product or service you should be able to broadcast that across your entire social network (and not just one) directly from the site.

Social networks have turned people into bragging machines. It's not the most appealing human trait, but spend time on them and this is a significant portion of how people share. We want others to know when we do something that makes us feel good. So why don't we see more of this integration in transactional Web experiences? See Sears for example:


In this example, Sears allows a participant to share products they are interested on Facebook. They can also do reviews of products and share those. The benefit for Sears is a very potent form of "social marketing" in that they get their product right into the main feed of a user and their friends/connections are likely to see it. It's more word of mouth than it is advertising.

So why aren't there more examples like this across the Web from major brands? It takes several "departments" to make something like this happen. Here are a few:

Legal
IT
Marketing
Social

It also takes the commitment of a senior leader within an organization to say "go make this happen". In nearly every conversation I find myself in with professionals in the industry, the struggle to define "social ROI" (return on investment) becomes a roadblock to innovation.

If you really want to connect the dots between social integration and purchase intent then please steal this idea and integrate social sharing to your products and services on your sites. Figure out how to do it and make it happen. And figure out how to track the links back to your site. You'll be one step closer to solving the "ROI" question in social media social business integration. Have you seen any great examples from big brands here? Share in the comments.

Facebook Can Thank Google For Timeline

I'm in the middle of customizing my new Facebook page featuring the new Timeline layout. In the process, I kept thinking that something felt familiar about it. Then, I remembered this Superbowl ad from Google.

It's a great ad because it's about life and it's about being human. It's about our connections and experiences. Ironically, with Timeline, Facebook succeeded on the promise that Google made in that ad. It's still a great ad and it still applies to Google, but I have to wonder of the developers and designers at Facebook had it in mind as they worked on Timeline in their effort to beat Google on Web domination. It's Possible. Meanwhile, Timeline is pretty powerful. Your life in digital.

People, Places & Events

Summer is over and Fall is officially into gear (boy is it ever). I actually spent a good part of the summer focusing on a local client and welcomed a little less travel. But now that things are back in swing, well it's time to shake things up a little. Here are a few places I'll be speaking at over the next few months.

New York: Mashable Social Good Summit
Thanks to the folks in our digital health practice, I get to share the the same stage with folks like Lance Armstrong, Geena Davis and Ted Turner. I'll only be up there briefly, but will be sharing some initial finding's from Edelman's upcoming Digital Health Barometer.

DC, Chicago: Lithium Likes To Love World Tour
I'll be joining folks like former Dachis Group colleague Peter Kim along with existing colleagues Michael Brito and Marshall Manson in both the DC and Chicago stops of the "Likes To Love" world tour from Lithium. Will be getting into social business trends setting up the stage for a few in depth case studies from folks like Verizon's Becky Carroll and RIM's (client) Michelle Kostya.

Minneapolis: MIMA Summit
In addition to speakers like Chris Anderson and Avinaush Kaushik, Edelman Digital's own Chuck Hemann will be joining some of the great minds in technology and business at the MIMA Summit. I'll be joining forces with Mullen's Edward Boches where we plan on mixing things up with an "un-panel" or group therapy for would be innovators. We promise it will be fun.

New York: Pivot
Pivot, guided by Brian Solis and featuring some of the brightest minds in the business including Ford's Scott Monty, Charlene Li, and Nestle's Pete Blackshaw should not dissapoint. I'll be discussing the new influencers and why it matters in media and business.

ScottsDale: Constellation's Connected Enterprise
Thrown by Constellation's notable luminaries such as Ray Wang, and featuring compelling speakers such as John Hagel (Power of Pull) and Doc Searls (Cluetrain Manifesto), I'll be discussing the role of "design" in building a social business.

Los Angeles: Blogworld
The industry's best kept secret is Blogworld. It has more substance than SXSW and networking which is smaller, perhaps more focused but just as good. I'll be discussing what Social Business Planning is and how it can be put into action. Look forward to speaking along side a roster that includes friends Ann Handley, CC Chapman, Jason Falls and Liz Strauss just to name a few.

Phew. I need a vacation already. Hope to see you at any of these events and as usual, be sure to say hello.

Where Were You?

It could not have been a more perfect day in Chicago—clear blue skies and crisp but sunny. I had a big presentation to give at a client, so as I got ready in the morning my thoughts were focused on that. For whatever reason that morning, we had our television on and I caught the news of a plane crashing into one of the Towers at the world trade center. I remember seeing some of the footage of the fire and smoke then immediately leaving so I would not be late for my meeting. The story was just beginning to break at this point and I never even considered it being a passenger airliner.

Since it was so nice out, I decided to ride my motorcycle to the meeting site (about 30 minutes from our home) and was essentially cut off from the rest of the world and the developments. By the time I had gotten into the clients office, everyone was talking about the events unfolding and by this time, the second tower had been hit. We had a screen up and were watching the live footage.

But, a decision was made to proceed with the meeting and the presentation. I delivered my part of it as best I could and clearly minds were elsewhere. We finished the meeting early and immediately brought the screen back up with the live coverage. I'll never forget this moment. The world trade center or "twin towers" as I called them growing up were GONE. I kept thinking, where are they??

I called my wife immediately but could not get through to any of my family in New York, so I rode back home and watched in horror as the day unfolded. Throughout the day I remember looking over at our nine month old baby boy and wondering what kind of world we had brought him into.

Fortunately none of my immediate family who worked in New York were hurt but we all know families and friends of families that were. Recently, I was walking past my high-school where I grew up on Long Island and noticed a street sign named after someone who was in one of the towers. He had graduated one year after I did.

So, that's where I was. I will never forget the day—or those directly affected.

Location-Based Marketing: What's in it for Me?

The following is a guest post from Mike Schneider and Aaron Strout, co-authors of Location-Based Marketing for Dummies. Mike is the senior vice president, director of digital incubator for allen & gerritsen. Aaron heads location-based marketing efforts at WCG. You can read more about Aaron and Mike here: http://locationbasedmarketingfordummies.com.

What is Location-Based Marketing? While an official definition doesn't yet exist for location-based marketing, we (Mike and Aaron) like to explain it as the art of engaging your customers and prospects using services like foursquare, Yelp, SCVNGR and Gowalla to drive loyalty, word of mouth marketing and referrals. These services are mostly available on smart phones (mobile phones that are web and GPS enabled) and allow users to "check in" to a physical location such as a restaurant, bar, print shop or dentist's office. Some of these services allow the businesses to reward their customers for checking in with special discounts, prizes, experiences and recognition.

Because more and more people are starting to use smart phones, it's becoming easier for software and application developers to take advantage of knowing within a tight radius, where someone is assuming that "someone" doesn't mind revealing their current location. The key here is for marketers and small business owners to provide enough value (discounts, prizes, recognition etc.) for customers to want to check in so that customers will share their data with them. Over time, marketers and business owners can leverage this rich data (age, sex, past check-in behavior, frequency of checking in, etc.). Even better, if the location is cool enough or the offer compelling enough, marketers and business owners can count on their customers sharing their "check ins" with their networks on places like Facebook, Twitter and Google +.

How Does a Business Get Started with a Location-Based Marketing Campaign?Knowing that people like lists, we've put together a straightforward blueprint for companies to help them think about how they might go about building a location-based marketing campaign. This isn't everything you need to know, it's a good primer for getting started. If you're really interested in digging in, we hear there is a good book to help you get started (shameless plug, we know).

1.  Set goals: Are you looking to drive foot traffic? Loyalty? Sales? Engagement? Think about how to measure this.
2. Claim your location: simply put, search for your business across the top LBS (foursquare, Yelp, Gowalla and SCVNGR) and put a "claim" in on your business's location(s). In most cases, this is a ten minute process. While you're at it, make sure you take a look at your location on Google Places.
3. Pick a service (or two) to support: Find 1-2 services to use (hint: if you’re in the travel and entertainment industry, Gowalla is a great choice). One way to decide which service(s) are right for you is to see how active your customers are across each service.
4. Reach out to your Influencers: Find out who your influencers are (the mayor, ambassador or the person at the top of your leader board is usually a good place to start) and get to know them. Heck, invite them in for coffee, lunch, a wine tasting.
5. Pick a great offer: Note that “great” doesn’t equal “expensive.” Sometimes, a sign in your store/venue honoring the “mayor” might be enough. My co-author, Mike Schneider, and I have what we call the “Ben & Jerry’s Rule” named after one of the first successful campaigns ever to roll out on foursquare. They offered 3 scoops of ice cream for $3 for everyone that checked in (cost for 3 scoops is normally $5.50). And even better, the mayor got a free extra scoop.
6. Measure, refine and optimize: This one is pretty straightforward. Have a plan and execute against it.
7. Gamification FTW: Don’t be afraid to leverage the “game dynamics” of some of these platforms as appropriate. For instance, on SCNVGR, you might give extra points for a picture with the store manager. Or if you sell coffee, a bonus for the best drink recommendation.
8. Let people know about your campaign: Remember to let people know about your program by putting up signs, telling them in your newsletter, including a mention on your “on hold” music, etc.
9. Operationalize, operationalize, operationalize: This means that if you are going to run a location based marketing campaign, train your employees. Train yourself. And make sure you have whatever it is that you’re promising. Not operationalizing is where many companies fall down.
10. Try out an API: If you are tech savvy (or have some tech savvy developers), try experimenting with some of the APIs these location based platform providers make available for free. You can jazz up your website or your mobile app.

Where is Location Based Marketing Headed?

We're seeing a lot of interesting developments in the space. The over exaggerated death of Facebook Places signals something that we have had our eyes on for a while.  The audience that knows about and understands checking in its current form is a subset of highly technical (geeky) early adopters, gamers and social networking dynamos. These folks spend money, they're loud and they are worth activating, but that behavior on its own is not going to pay off the true value of location. Instead, there are other ways for consumers to use and express their location to get value.

• Passive Checking In / Precision: Reward cards like Tasti-D-Lite's check people in automatically using the foursquare API, but companies like Shopkick are experimenting with sound wave emitters that can track people to specific aisles of a store and test whether they can get people to spend with targeted offers, but also see if they can get them to change behavior. I remember proposing similar technology to a pharma client which did the same using RFID trackers. They thought this was too icky, but Shopkick, according to some chats I've had with Forrester has 2.5 million users and 40% are active. That is huge and represents a seriously amazing opportunity to get to shoppers and interact with / influence them at decision point.
• Intent / Future: Applications like Forecast, Plancast and Ditto have people telling where they are going to be. This represents a huge opportunity for merchants to use structured data to serve a group of people who need their services, or to attempt to change their intended behavior. The first ones into the pool get the advantage and I bet they get it at almost zero cost.
• In a status or meta data: Facebook, like Google+ is using location as a feature and it's actually pretty brilliant because they are getting more than just a check in. They're getting personal and professional expressions wrapped around a location. The problem is that the data is still highly unstructured and difficult to analyze, but if anyone can figure it out, it's Google. Look for them to do cool things with the location data that you provide to Google+. I see recommendations based on what your friends or others like you like without you having to answer many questions.
• Recommendation Engines: Bizzy and WHERE are the leaders in this category. Bizzy recently integrated with foursquare so they can pull in your locations and add places you have been to their recommendation technology. They also have a concept of "checking out" [BTW are the shenanigans at techcrunch wacky or what? start another blog Mike] where you rate your experience in a structured manner. They also just released a reminder notification that pings you 60 minutes after you check-in on foursquare to remind you to check out on Bizzy.
• At Point of Sale: Screw checking in, just pay. Technologies like The LevelUp are capturing your location, but they aren't broadcasting it to anyone (yet). Instead they're quietly building a future-forward loyalty, cross merchant loyalty program that will have one of the most interesting sets of data anyone has seen. Look for them to possibly merge with SCVNGR at some point and connect the social aspects. For now, though, we'll take one step mobile payments and behind-the-scenes discounts on anything we want. You can leave your wallet at home!

Hopefully we've piqued your interest in location-based marketing. If you have any questions, please ask away in the comments and we'll do our best to answer them.

Optimizing Content & Visibility with SlideShare

Originally Posted on Edelman Digital

As a public relations firm, we are always looking to engage with key audiences and share ideas though unique avenues. Recently, we began doing this through SlideShare. Think of it as YouTube for documents: SlideShare offers us a platform for listening and discussing what matters most to our work, our clients, and the industries and communities we participate in.

As communicators creating new content moving forward, we keep in mind the below five best practices for creating and sharing effective content on SlideShare:

1. Make It Visual

Some of the most viewed and shared presentations on Slideshare go beyond bullet points and extensive copy in favor of highly visual presentations that communicate ideas quickly and in an engaging fashion. Presentations can be made more visual by leveraging imagery from sources such as Flickr pending that a user has a Creative Commons license stating that the work is free to use pending attribution to the creator. Presentations that use info graphics, charts and information design instead of text-based data points also tend to do well and shared more often.

2. Have a Definitive POV

POVs and perspectives distributed on Slideshare must be definitive, ownable and expressed in a compelling way. In other words, the creator of the content needs to be opinionated and the creation must communicate these opinions in clear and memorable ways. Models and case studies should be used to help communicate and support ideas, theories and perspectives.

3. Share What You Know (and Make It Interesting)

Slideshare’s ecosystem rewards individuals and brands if they openly share knowledge in compelling ways. Pick topics that have strong communities around them and then produce a deck that tells a story about what you know and teaches the reader something. Focusing on both specialized content catered to a specific audience targets the presentation and increases the odds of it getting circulated. Good writing, images and storytelling techniques are what will make the knowledge compelling.

4. Include Others

Just like other forms of social media, putting the spotlight on others is an effective tactic in SlideShare. The inclusion of others and their opinions opens up the content to their networks and puts the author of the presentation in the position of curator. This combination creates both value and increases the odds of the slideshow getting circulated.

5. Give Your Presentation A Theme

Memorable presentations sometimes break the mold a bit and feature custom themes in the form of a concept, a visual language or even the voice of the presentation. Typically themes are most effective when all three work together. Themes help make the content more interesting, relevant and enjoyable.

This week Edelman launched our official Edelman SlideShare Network to help share more presentations, documents and content with the world through SlideShare’s growing community. Within the network, specific channels are tailored to various Edelman content categories; Edelman Showcase – provides a look at client programs from our practices; Edelman Talks – serves as the hub for presentations from conferences and speaking engagements; Edelman Insights – acts as the home for all Edelman IP; and Edelman Etc. – offers an eclectic outlet for Edelman employees to share their interests and passions. Edelman Digital even uses Slideshare to showcase its portfolio which lives both on Slideshare and Edelmandigital.com. Slideshare combined with great content and presentations gives communicators the ability to make their content more compelling, portable and sharable.