<mom> What do you say? </mom>

Date: September 9, 2008 Author: Sean Comments: 11 Replies

When we were little kids, my little brother and I heard this all the time. When Mrs Kennedy (not that one, the one on 138th street in the Bronx) gave us an ice pop, when grandma gave us a quarter, when someone told us we looked great in our leisure suits (if i ever find the photos, I will scan and add to flickr). Mom used that phrase because we were little, didn’t know any better, were too busy trying to scarf down the ice pop and because we were learning the social customs that (some) grownups already knew: when someone gives you a compliment or a gift, you say thank you.

How does this all relate to Social Interactions on the Web? Any decent Social Media effort will have some kind of Outreach program:

1. Identifying bloggers, podcasters, videobloggers, forums, communities, social spaces that have something in common with the Social Media Effort
2. Joining the spaces and conversations in a forward, transparent manner
3. Add value to the discussions and attention without expectation or demand of reciprocity (pay it forward slick ad guy)
4. Make good stuff, not marketing taglines or “socialized” press releases
5. Keep the effort going – this is more about bringing big corporations down to eye level with the user than “eyeballs” or “share” or “Audience”

So now a Social Media Effort is doing outreach the right way, is adding something to the conversation, is getting people talking. Users start talking. 2-way dialog meets the 2-way web:

Users start leaving comments on the Social Media Effort’s YouTube videos
Users start threads in a forum dedicated to some topic or subject that the Social Media Effort is engaged in
Users start twittering about it (thanks Pistachio!)
Users start blogging about it
Users start mentioning it in their podcasts, videoblogs, screencasts
Users start participating, giving you their clicks, their eyeballs, their intention, and their voices

Did you remember to say thank you?

In the “little kid” example, it starts in direct personal interactions and continues in the dreaded process of writing thank you notes for birthday and Christmas presents. In this Social Media world of ours, when a user leaves a comment on your blog do you look to see where they are coming from? Do you respond to their comment? Do you check out their blog? Do you look and see what they are writing, what they are into? Do you leave a comment on their blog? Do you add them to your blogroll? When they mention you in a forum like Videoblogging do you respond on-list or leave them a note or tweet? Do you have the processes and procedures in place to listen AND respond?

Not all users will have something to say that is profound or game changing or even nice. Sometimes it will be mean, or bitchy, or completely negative. Sometimes it will be missing the point entirely. Sometimes it will be a simple, anonymous “thanks guys” – and thats it. Its on their terms.

The point is, you are becoming a neighbor, joining a community, being part of something that is smaller and bigger than yourself. Scoble and Godin can’t answer every comment and no one expects a Social Media Effort to mean “direct, personal, immediate, one-to-one communication”. But they do expect that you are listening and they expect you to show it. Demonstrative examples of “hey, we aren’t asleep at the switch or using this Social Media stuff to scam you”.

Are YOU actively participating in the architectures of participation you are spending so much time and money and effort on? Are you showing the community you are trying to engage that you are both interesting AND interested? Social Media Efforts ache over how many ways they can engage the user and get them to hit the SUBMIT button, register, leave a comment or write a wiki entry. If you are spending all this time creating “feedback loops”: platforms, code and process to get users to interact and participate and join in, are you closing the loop?

Some Social Media Efforts spend a fortune (things like Radian6, BuzzMetrics, employees, PR/Ad/Social Media agency personnel) on listening to the places and spaces where users are talking about them. Some more grassroots or startup Social Media Efforts utilize Technorati/Google Alerts/Summize/TweetScan/Etc. and brute-force (human capital) to see where they are being mentioned.

Do:

Have a blogroll – it is an outward, persistent sign of the sites, people and voices you believe in.
Linklove – be “linky” – link to the users, call it out when they add something to the conversation, send the attention of the conversation at your door to their door
Celebrate the things happening OUTSIDE your four walls – if your entire conversation is “me, me, me” the conversation will become a monologue. Call out the wins and ideas of the community, show you are participating by checking out their flickr feed, their blog, their tweets, their Second Life island. Spend a % (make it a hard rule if you have to – “one story every day or week or hour will be dedicated to THEM”) of your time and blog space and twitter feed and flickr experience on the community
Participate – in the comments, forum, NING ring on your platforms AND the platforms where your users live. Don’t be radio-silent. Show them someone is there and her/his name is Susan or Fred not ADMIN or MODERATOR. Humans don’t have conversations with MODERATORS. In the same way that you call out what users are doing outside your four walls also participate on the user’s sites/platforms. Leave a comment on their blog or Flickr feed. Reply to their tweets. Show you are listening AND visiting
Don’t trust one person to be the “community manager” and be responsible for all the commenting and listening and responding – it is everyone’s job. Find ways to get individuals inside the company or org interested in participating. Give them small things to do, get their opinion on what they can do/interested in/would be willing to try. Not everyone wants to be on camera or a blogger – and they all have day-jobs. Make it as frictionless and as fun as possible. I would rather interact with someone inside than some hired blogger or agency wonk

When a user paid you a compliment with their attention, did you remember to write a thank you note?

Movie Game on Twitter

Date: September 2, 2008 Author: Sean Comments: 1 Reply

A long time ago I worked as a bar bouncer in the Bronx and Manhattan. Except for the nights where I was the only one working, we usually had between 4 and 6 guys standing at the door until it got crowded (which in NYC, where bars don’t close until 4am is usually around 10-11pm). This means we had between 2-3 hours a night to make fun of the customers, confiscate fake IDs, discuss politics, economics, chicks and entertain ourselves before “prime time” hit.

A favorite form of entertainment (thanks Big Rich) was the Movie Game. The game is usually better with an odd number of players (you will see why in a second), requires some understanding of pop culture and some kinda love of the movies. The rules are simple, and a lot like tag (without the running – remember, we couldnt leave the door when we were working):

1. Player A Says the Name of a Movie
2. Player B says the Name of an Actor in Player A’s Movie
3. Player C says the Name of another Movie Player B’s Actor was in
4. Rinse and repeat until someone can’t name a movie or an actor and get bounced out

How does this work with Twitter?

you @ someone on your follow/following list with the hashtag #moviegame and the movie name/actor – the tweet would look something like this:

ME:
@chrisbrogan #moviegame Movie: Full Metal Jacket

who would then tweet to Britt

@britter #moviegame Actor: Vincent D’Onofrio

who would then tweet to Micah

@micah #moviegame Movie: My Bodyguard

who would then…

Now due to the asynchronous nature of twitter there are a couple of problems – anyone can hit IMDB as they answer, there is no guarantee Britter is at her machine when her round starts, there is no “Out” as we aren’t all standing at the door of a bar freezing our you-know-whats off. But it would be interesting to see how many answers, at what time hit with twitter (by following the hashtag).

And everyone would need to use the honor system 🙂

so who wants to play?

Social Media Best Practices

Date: August 28, 2008 Author: Sean Comments: 4 Replies

Thanks Chris – Here are my Social Media Best Practices… YMMV, 1. Commitment
This is not a campaign. It is not an event. It is not a fixed period in time when effort will be thrown against X product or idea. It is an ongoing effort, a conversation, a multi-faceted dialog. If you go into a Social Media project and think there is an end-state you are painfully missing the point. The users want to engage. They want to play with you. And they want to do it on their terms. They will connect when it is convenient for them. They might not come back for months, but that doesn’t mean they don’t love ya – they will be telling everyone they know. A Social Media effort will never be Cap-Ex – it is ongoing, evergreen, committed.

Imagine being in a bar, talking to someone and halfway through the conversation they go silent and walk away, mid-sentence. Thats a real-world example of what happens when a social media effort ends… It isnt supposed to. The party can move to another bar, apartment, social media platform but you dont want to leave the users mid-conversation.

At Gnomedex recently, a friend told me about a client of his who really wanted to blog like their competitor. And he took them through what this meant – commitment, honesty, authenticity, being real and talking back to the users. At the end of the day, the client admitted they weren’t ready to be that transparent, authentic, or committed. They admitted that they weren’t ready and had a ways to go and needed to take their time to get there. As someone who has done a LOT of client work this is a huge moment and I applaud the agency and the client for getting to the point of not doing something because the other kids are doing it.

Not committing to doing something halfway is committing to a real respect for the user.

2. WHO (at the beginning)?
Spend some effort, not a brainstorm session, not an afternoon, but some serious sleeves-rolled-up, sweating, chugging coffee, fingers stained with dry-erase marker time to get an understanding of the user you want to meet. Try more time than it takes to get to 90% on your LinkedIn or Match.com profile. You want to reach people, communicate WITH them, get them interested – it kinda pays off if you actually make the attempt to understand them upfront.

3. Outreach
I will spend a bigger blog post on this because it is so important (and I have mentioned it in lots ‘o places) but Outreach needs to be a part of whatever you do in Social Media. No one ever woke up and had 100s of friends. You need to reach out to them, listen to what they are into, what is ticking them off or getting them excited.

Dive in, get engaged, participate with them, get active, listen, talk, be humble, ask questions, PM people, contact the leaders of the tribe or community. If you want to connect with tribesmen in a remote civilization in the South Pacific, using a megaphone from a chopper is a bad idea. You need to get in there, show you want to be a part of something OTHER than yourself (or company). Give a little to get a little. Pay it forward with your attention to (hopefully) get their attention.

Comment on their blog posts. Thank them for their comments. Give the links to things you have found that are relevant (NOT CORP SPAM – but real valuable pointers). Spend more time pointing out the cool things that are happening OUTSIDE your four walls. Be a human being that is interesting BECAUSE he/she is INTERESTING.

We all laugh when we see another Tweet or Blog Post where “clueless huge PR Firm XXX pitched me and NEVER read my blog!”. BUT WE DO THIS TO USERS ALL THE TIME. We either don’t give them a payoff for their attention, take them for granted, think our ideas were so precious-“how could they not love us” or we make some cultural gaffe that signals we didn’t do our homework/didn’t try hard enough. It all rolls up to research and respect and humility and EMPATHY – if we can’t relate to them, how can we communicate with them.

Don’t be another half-assed ad campaign.

4. WHO? (in-progress)
So we spent the time, did the research, looked at the places and spaces these users live, we joined them at their jamboree, hoe-down, gathering of the pack, etc. We begin to scratch the surface…

And then we execute the plan according to the messaging guidelines and creative brief, making sure the touchpoints and brand impressions are expressed.

= EPIC FAIL

Once you start listening, once you begin engagement, once you take a minute to try to understand the user it doesn’t stop there. You need to keep listening, keep connecting, keep trying to understand them and how they are changing (and they are changing). Users aren’t static. They don’t live on a timeline or production calendar or release cycle. If we commit to the long term risks and benefits of a conversation then we need to live with them long term and LISTEN long term.

5. GOALS
Nail down the goals on a segment by segment basis. One size fits most sucks, and on the web the suckage is even more pronounced. Don’t start with an end-state in mind, rather start with an opening state (100 users adding comments, enough activity for a full-time moderator, 1000 subscribers to the newsletter) and a bunch of empty bullet points to fill in as you learn and grow the effort.

6. Tactics
Identify, based on the work you have done to engage and understand the user what are the best ways to reach them – Blogging? Wiki? Virtual World?, In-Game efforts? Meetups? Twebinars? Twitter? Video? Widgets? Facebook?

In the 80s, when Desktop Publishing exploded (thanks Apple) you could use multiple fonts on a document – AND EVERYONE DID. It was painful, company newsletter started looking like ransom notes – bad news. Just because you can use every platform, mashup, codebase, meme and tactic in the world doesn’t mean you should. Put the user in the center of your efforts, identify the touchpoints they are in, make smart bets and ASK THE USERS ABOUT OTHER CHANNELS to connect to them.

7. The User Is The Platform
Map to their needs, their devices and their ideas. Don’t make them come to you. Put lots of lines in the water and breadcrumbs on the path… if what you are doing connects with them they will follow back (and bring their friends). Remember the “WTF? Rule” – if you are doing something and say to yourself “WTF?” then you should probably reconsider.

The user makes choices and commitments without you in the decision. They are a Photobucket guy or a Flickr kid. They live on MySpace or FB or LinkedIn. If you want to reach them you need to be where they are (and again – not everywhere, but focused, relevant, & humble)

Video? Don’t just host it on your site, make it shareable, embeddable, linkable and even indexable (at least have a transcript or use a service like http://www.DotSub.com). Share it with YouTube, get it on iTunes, post it to Facebook, make it shareable via RSS, email, AIM, etc. Let your users leave comments via Seesmic or Eyejot, create a channel for them to engage.

8. ~~Soylent Green~~ Social Media Is People
Pesky humans. They tend to recognize their own, have insanely honed BS detectors, can sense marketing at 100 paces and aren’t afraid to bitch and moan until someone pays attention to them.

Then again, the coolest stories inside a company, organization, table tennis team, etc. are from the people there. Not the spokesman. Not the media-trained, brightsmiled, finely manicured spokesman/pitchman/flimflam man. The 60-year old guy who has given up every weekend for the last 20 years to Habitat for Humanity AND is the number one engineer in the company is a heckuva lot more interesting than the Troy McClure (simpsons) wannabe who will be selling/telling us all the wonderful ideas behind the product. For the longest time, the only people inside a BIG company we could see where the C-Suite kids who made their quarterly appearance on CNBC. Users are getting a taste of the real people inside companies and they want more – not for inside secrets or war stories or gossip – but because they are giving a little bit of themselves (money, attention, fan-boy-hood) and want a little something human in return.

At our startup, the users are clamoring for the professionals within the company to engage them. They want to see and hear from the Pros and get sometimes a little unhappy when the guys can’t participate in the forums fast enough or often enough. Its a learning curve for the Digital team, and it means we are doing something right (and need to do it more and with more people to spread out the work).
\
I will probably think up 100 more as I drive home

Looks like Brogan got me blogging again.

Outreach and Reaching Out

Date: June 14, 2008 Author: Sean Comments: 1 Reply

Thanks to a pointer from @chrisbrogan, Mack Collier shares a Ggrreeeaaaattt! post today on Outreach and how companies can do it better. Solid, smart stuff:

http://moblogsmoproblems.blogspot.com/2007/09/how-to-launch-successful-blogger.html

The biggest point he makes is “EFFORT”. Outreach isnt a campaign. It isnt a CMR program. It doesnt have a defined beginning or end – it is an ongoing effort to reach and stay in touch. It doesn’t have an end-point. There need to be gateways/reviews (this is, after all, outreach in a corporate environment) but they need to be about refining the outreach efforts. Dont start doing Outreach if there isn’t complete commitment and a requirement that it is honest, transparent dialog.

One of the thing we did on a recent project was identify all of the different niches/affinity groups/communities that are out there that fit within what the client does (a fortune 50 global corporation). The idea being, lets connect with folks in the “sandboxes” where we also play, not as a big global company, but as a new neighbor. We connected with the clubs and meetups and independent bloggers who were talking about us already, but we also tried to introduce ourselves to users who might not think we were sharing their space.

Outreach is also not just relegated to bloggers. Videobloggers, Twitterers, Forums, Meetups, etc. should also be considered but with caution – THIS IS NOT MARKETING OR PR AS USUAL. Companies need to swallow a lot of pride, add a lot of fiber to their diet, get ready to take some dings and most importantly – BE HUMBLE. You are asking permission to join their conversation. You are trying to add value to them, not “monetize their attention”.

Twitter has been incredible for this type of outreach… @pandora_labs and @JetBlue are actually using twitter to listen to what users are saying on the live web about their products/company – then commenting back to the twitter user with answers to their questions or comments.

Outreach also doesn’t mean advertising. It isn’t about finding a new place to sponsor or personality to buy. It isn’t a transaction. The value exchange is light, the ROI is not really measurable and the direct results are fuzzy. Emphasize the “love” in “LINK LOVE”. Send links because you dig what these people are saying. Leave comments and trackbacks that add value – not because you want them to like you, but because you like them. Respect when they disagree and take shots at you – this is the one chance you have at starting a dialog. Add them to the blogroll, ask them for their ideas, respect their space.

You do it wrong at your own peril. If you don’t do it, you won’t know what you are missing. If you try hard, and commit…

They might start listening to what you have to say…

My Thoughts – Starting a Social Media Strategy

Date: June 13, 2008 Author: Sean Comments: 4 Replies

Chris Brogan wrote one of his usual thought starters today (I feel like a slacker around the guy and I make the Amish look lazy) about starting a Social Media strategy. As usual (for him) it was a mix of simple and advanced concepts, ideas and challenges and will be a killer series to watch.

Dig it here – http://www.chrisbrogan.com/starting-a-social-media-strategy/

Some killer points:

Begin with the End in Mind – Strategy isn’t the goal. It’s the path you plan to take to get there. So, let’s put some goals out, and then talk through how to build a strategy to reach them.

Are you ready to handle negativity? Platforms like blogs and videos allow for negative comments, and some company cultures aren’t ready to engage with those opinions.

Attention: learn how to build awareness and encourage relationships with the media you’re making.

As someone who has done this a couple of times, for big and small companies, it is hard to imagine any one way to do it. There is a huge palette to work from, with tons of options and features ranging from the simple to the complex. But tools and platforms and media types (video, text, audio) aren’t a strategy. You have to start with the basics:
Who are we trying to reach (Users – first and always)
Why are we trying to reach them (purpose for this – and it can’t be to create shareholder value or trick people into a CRM loop)
What are we trying to start (conversation, ideation, feedback loop, etc.)
Where are we trying to reach them (go to the users, where they live, in context, with strong respect for them and their space)

After the goals are set, you need to have principles, reasons why you are doing what you are doing. If you don’t set the bar for yourself, transparently and openly, the users will think you are scamming them (their shields are up whether you like it or not – get used to it). Principles aren’t just something to put on a deck slide, they are one of your checklists that live with whatever you are doing. Some principles from previous projects –
1. We aren’t selling anything
2. We are telling the stories of the people and history of this company
3. If it feels like a press release – DELETE it
4. We will take crap from some users, this is not a drill
5. It’s about them. Their needs, their conversations… we are a host, a guide, a facilitator… we dont own them but they can PWN us
6. The users have more ideas than any team can come up with in 5 years… work with them to set the editorial calendar (better yet – throw out the editorial calendar)

Some additional thoughts:

Listening has to be 50% of the initiative, otherwise it is a monologue not a dialog. But it has to be ACTIVE LISTENING. I once had a client who described the web, and specifically the social digital ecosystem as the greatest listening post for a brand in history. He was 1% right. If you listen and dont react/act/respond/show you are paying attention you are only getting 1% of the value.

Keep the User/Audience at the center of the strategy at all times. Dont let marketing/pr/IT/the front office/the consultant/the agency ANYONE with an agenda change that. Its the difference between talking AT someone and talking WITH them.

Outreach Outreach Outreach… a company/nonprofit/personal brand/whatever doesnt exist in a vacuum – no man is an island, and neither is your brand. You need to celebrate the people, ideas and stories outside of your four walls – even if they disagree with you sometimes. Do it because it is important. Do it because you want the users to see the things that you think are cool, do it because sending a link is a form of currency that actually MEANS something (your attention + your audience’s attention = value). Do it because you can answer or correct the record in real time.

Less is More, until you need MORE – Start small, be humble, ask questions, challenge the users. Do little things savagely well… and then build up on the strategy. Keep a backlog of all the things you want to do, but you dont have to do them all at once and you can get some things wrong – users will forgive you.

Unsubscribing… People

Date: May 26, 2008 Author: Sean Comments: Leave a reply

Today on twitter, one guy I follow was being negative about another guy I follow. Nerdfight? Not really. It did get me thinking about UNSUBSCRIBING people.

In the old days (yesterday), if you didn’t like something written in the newspaper/magazine or said on the TV or radio, you would write a letter to the editor or call the offending media outlet and give them a piece of your mind. 99% of the world shook their fist at the sky and 1% actually did something.

Which made you feel better. You told them. You showed them. More importantly, you believe that someone listened (even if it was the poor volunteer or intern answering the phone).

The big threat, the “nuclear option” so to speak, is to boycott or unsubscribe. To stop paying for your daily paper because you hate their stance on a subject. Cease watching channel 7 because they have a stance or story or show or personality that REALLY ticks you off. Individually, users who take the unsubscribe route are less value. When a lot of users threaten or even take the step of unsubscribing (a lot of business models are based on users being too busy or lazy to take action – health club memberships, gift cards, etc.) then things get dicey. Action is taken, people are sent to rehab 🙂 and hopefully there will be another hollywood starlet controversy to push this off the front of the user’s brain.

But how does that work today? Users have less loyalty to their media sources, they pay for less of them (I havent purchased a newspaper in years), they are more discerning and more willing to try new things/new voices. More and more, individual voices are getting the same real estate on users’ brains. Users are making up their own minds, defining their own media-mix, choosing their sources based on their beliefs (and the recommendations of their friends/acquaintances). They are picking and choosing and remixing their information – on their terms.

So what happens now, when your media mix doesn’t just include stories or columns or media outlets but ideas, memes, attitudes, conversations, feeds and most importantly, PEOPLE. These days you can:

Subscribe to a concept or keyword.

You can follow all of the links someone else thinks are cool.

You can listen to someone else’s stream of attention via twitter or jaiku.

You can listen to their mix on muxtape

You can syndicate your own ideas, thoughts, insane ramblings and inane observations to anyone who will listen.

Its on my terms. I follow Bob or Jane by choice. I had to actively go and find them (or the service I am on added them from my address book or facebook profile, etc.), I had to subscribe to them via RSS, or twitter or dopplr, email newsletter or any of 100 other services, I had to give my attention to that/those sources.

So if I don’t like what you have to say, if I don’t like your stance on a topic, if I don’t dig your attitude or think you are an elitist or you just aren’t doing it for me anymore I can ALWAYS UNSUBSCRIBE YOU. The barriers to exit (calling to unsubscribe from a newspaper, actually going to the store to use the gift card, etc.) are at their lowest point ever. I drop your feed, unfriend you, refuse to accept future invites, stop you from entering my attention stream, etc.

Now I don’t have to listen (and never did). I can unsubscribe from a voice, from a PERSON.

Unfollow is a powerful option for the user and a powerful challenge to the one sharing ideas (company or person). A source/feed/person has to earn my attention (through friendship, quality of their ideas, etc.). Then they need to keep earning it every single day.

On Listening and Blogging

Date: January 12, 2008 Author: Sean Comments: 3 Replies

SO I post the following to twitter the other day:

new rules – RTFC – read the f’ing comments social means listening as much as talkin

… because I have been spending a lot of time lately thinking about outreach. Mainly I was thinking about the pre-launch side of outreach – the seeding of the ground before a project, platform, blog, whatever goes live. Talking to people, investing in a community, listening. And I realized I was taking for granted the other side of outreach – the post-launch, maintenance, retail part of outreach where you actually live in a community, doing your thing day to day, listening to your users.

As a result of that twitter post, the awesome Britter posted on her blog Bold Words:

Dying to Listen
Participation Goes Both Ways

To play in this particular pool of creating, I think you need to develop equal skills in watching and listening. Because individuals can respond, if you fail to pay attention, they’ll take their eyeballs, ears, and minds somewhere else.

So I complain about listening, and Britt responds with a excellent post (you should read the whole thing) and then I get some data on a project of mine that blows my mind. I have a project where we spent tons of time thinking and mapping and trying to plan for how we were going to roll out blog posts and videoblogs over the next year – an editorial calendar. One of the biggest things hanging over the project was the idea “feed the beast”. We need to be able to react quickly. We need to have lots of quality stories and ideas on the site and it was going to be dynamic – we couldnt plan the whole year long program out. Feeding the Beast was always in the back of our minds.

In the first 5 days of the program, on one section of the platform we built, we created a blog-like page that had a big idea from the client at the top and then we asked the users to give us their feedback. The results were staggering. in 2-4 days we had over 230 really great comment. Thoughtful, insightful, “I want to see x y and z” and “i think the big issue you arent talking about is [issue]”. Killer stuff.

Feeding the beast? Hell, the users are giving us ideas that are as good as anything that came from one of my strategy decks or a 4 hr brainstorm. If we listened to the users, we would NEVER worry about coming up with something to say. They were helping us define the editorial calendar. We dont need to worry about shooting or writing or recording something they might like.

Today, Chris Brogan (a living, breathing machine – i have no idea how he gets it all done) wrote this great post: 5 Starter Moves- Should Blogging Go Next
:

I’m going to step out and say that maybe a blog ISN’T a good first choice. Why? Because I think that blogs are fairly substantial steps, and that an organization might feel really exposed if their first attempt at clearing their throat is an A Cappella moment on stage in front of thousands.

And he is right. Its a big step for a company to go from tightly managing their message and their brand to “going without a net” and walking the social media highwire. It isn’t comfortable, its not safe. But if done well, with honesty, humility, and effort, the users will appreciate it.

I left the following as a comment on his post – dont know why I didnt leave a trackback… early morning, sleepy, etc 🙂

PR guys get storytelling thru press releases, briefings, etc. Marketing guys get message management, taglines, desired brand impressions. Blogging requires them to go outside their comfort zone. It requires them (hopefully) to say less about what they want the user to hear and more about *what is happening here*. The biggest thing I find clients need to understand is they have to “feed the beast” – write good stuff, early and often.

“Why isn’t anyone commenting on my blog post?!!?” – because you keep letting the intern copy-paste press releases into your blog. Users are taking one look at this and decided it is crap. “Why isn’t anyone subscribing to my feed/visiting my blog? – my pageviews suck!” – because you announced the blog through a press release. You didn’t bother to become part of the community your company wants to have a conversation with. You don’t link to or comment on others blogs with anything of value. You are trying to reach a world that doesn’t read press releases and discovers information and stories with a very low “bullsh!t” tolerance.

A lot of clients start blogging long before they learn to listen for one reason – listening is hard work. It doesnt scale well. If you have a blog with 50-60 comments per post (after spam and dirty word filtering) that is a LOT of work to read through them and respond to each one – especially if the users are writing thoughtful comments. If you have your CEO or VP of x as the author of the blog, they are most likely writing the post on their blackberry and sending it to the web team to post, if at all. Reply to each and every one? Not gonna happen.

And when you don’t listen, you anger the users. You are “using” social media tools, but aren’t really invested in the concept or practice of social.

Companies want to jump in with both feet, and will, recognizing they may not have a handle on this whole blogging thing (the active listening side, the active storytelling side or the outreach side) – sometimes actually coming out and saying “we cant respond to all of your comments, but we do read them all”. And thats OK (for now). Its an evolution not a revolution. You have more than one chance to make a good impression, especially if you have some humility, make the effort and invest in the community you are trying to build. A company can get it wrong, dust off and try again.

The irony is, “feeding the beast”, coming up with good stories to tell isn’t very hard if you are listening. The users are telling you what interests them. They are giving you free (and incredibly valuable) advice on comment by comment basis. Real feedback, not focus group “I want to please the moderator and get my $100? nonsense. The more honest a company is with blogging, the more honest the users will be in their comments.

If companies listen, they will never need to worry about running out of things to blog or podcast or videoblog about. The users will set the editorial calendar for them. Which is actually kinda cool.