[chrisbrogan.com]

Posted: 18 Aug 2008 10:53 PM PDT

First, look at this great PR letter sent to me by Scott Duehlmeier from the Summit Group:

Chris-

Good evening, my name is Scott Duehlmeier with The Summit Group (PR/AD agency) in Salt Lake City, Utah. We recently created a social media department, and are working with a client who specializes in the creation of social networking platforms. I know they have very specific announcements coming up, and I was wondering if you even like to receive these types of announcements (elearning, online collaboration, marketing, social networking, corporate training.) The last thing I would want to do is just start blindly sending press releases or other correspondence your way, without even an introduction email asking you if you would even be interested in receiving these type of announcements.

I know you must get countless email a day regarding this type of thing, so I wanted to at least send you an email introducing myself and gauge your interest level. I’ll be in touch, thank you for your time.

Best-
Scott Duehlmeier

THE SUMMIT GROUP COMMUNICATIONS

So what? Manners, that’s what. Scott wrote me a very polite, very personal-seeming opt-in letter, asking me if I wanted to receive more info from him about clients that fit the profile he perceived about me from my blog. Answer= yes.

And in great part, it’s because Scott did a great job of sending a human-sounding letter.

As my storyteller friend Clarence would say, “Marinate.”

ShareThis

How Jive Software Sees Enterprises and Community Software

Posted: 18 Aug 2008 09:05 PM PDT

I had a chance to talk with Sam Lawrence, CMO of Jive Software about what’s coming out in his 2.5 release of Clearspace, Jive’s enterprise community software platform. (Note, we use the 2.0.x version of Clearspace to power Project Dogfood). There are a bunch of features that will no doubt get covered everywhere but very capable people. What I wanted to talk about was some of what came out in the conversation with Sam.

How Social Software Merges with the Enterprise

First, it has to integrate with the tools they understand. Sam showed me how Clearspace integrates with Salesforce.com, for instance. This was interesting. Because now, if I’m a sales guy and I’m getting ready to call one of my prospects or clients, I’ll get anything said anywhere within the Clearspace product about that company or prospect as information before I make the call.

If you’re a social software provider, or someone looking to advise companies on social software, think about this kind of usage: merging what Mzinga’s Rachel Happe calls “unstructured data” in with a typical contact record.

Easy and Easier Still

Sam mentioned that Clearspace has an email in and out feature, that allows mobile users and others to get information in and out of the platform simply, and through nothing more than an email interface (for instance). It should be easy to use a community platform, and it shouldn’t always require a full web browser. Most enterprise customers aren’t using iPhones.

Customization and Less Heavy IT Department Lifting

Lots of the changes in 2.5 might seem a bit aesthetic at first, but think about it: If you are building a social software platform and it is to be supported internally, you’ll want something that allows people to change and fiddle with most of it without a lot of effort required from IT. Why? Because they have other, bigger fish to fry. I like this as a trend, and I hope other platform providers continue to make things easily customizable, and yet not especially difficult to manage.

Further Integration

We have to stop thinking of social software as an island. It’s going to be part of the fabric, and that requires integration points, connectivity to the way people create business processes, and flexible enough to fit within an organization’s existing business styles. I saw lots of that in Jive’s latest release, and Sam talked about the company’s further efforts in that department for future visions.

Takeaways

I believe social software has a good opportunity to find its way into the enterprise in a much bigger way. There are other great companies doing this kind of thing as well. I’m excited by what I see from my friends at Mzinga, Telligent, and other platforms working in the enterprise software space.

For the rest of you looking to take your products to an even larger audience, especially if you’re hoping to become part of the way business is done, I think the future comes only once we give people adequate bridges forward from the present.

Here’s a video Jive made of their product, if you want more details:

Clearspace 2.5 from Jive Software on Vimeo.

ShareThis

On Twitter and Listening

Posted: 18 Aug 2008 07:28 PM PDT

Several months ago, Christopher S. Penn told me that I should use SpinVox to convert my voicemail into text. I thought it was a good idea, but I was using another product entirely for another different reason. But the other day, I tweeted something on Twitter about deleting hundreds un-listened-to (what’s the right way to say that?) voice mails. It was just me blabbing into the wind that I had too many voicemails and had decided to throw them away.

Except that James Whatley was listening. It turns out that the @whatleydude is also the “social media chap” for SpinVox, and while other people offered me a kind and understanding, “Dude, that’s a lot of voice mail,” James heard opportunity. (There’s word that Pat Phelan had something to do with this, too, but that’s unsubstantiated).

James set me up with a trial SpinVox account, sent me the information (customized for me) on how to configure my account for my specific carrier, and got me on my way. I set the service up in a few minutes, and then had my wife make a few test calls. It’s pretty cool.

As a review, this is like, months and months (years?) late. The product has been out for a while. But whatever. If you want to try something interesting, SpinVox is a speech-to-text voicemail translator, and it worked pretty darned good for me. I plan to keep using it for a while and see how it changes the way I do business. (Thanks for that, James!)

If You Are a Business

Are your customers online? Well, I say yes to most folks. If so, are you listening to blogs, to Twitter, to other sources of information? HOW are you listening?

I use a lot of free tools to scan the web and pay attention. I use Technorati, Google Blogsearch, and Twitter Search to name a few.

There are other tools. One is Radian6. I worked with them on a series of Twebinars (twitter meets webinar), and the last of these comes up Tuesday the 19th at 2PM (tomorrow as I’m writing this). The details are here. I’m doubly thrilled because CEO Marcel Lebrun is going to join me live in the studio to talk with folks about the importance of listening.

If you’re a business, do what James Whatley did with SpinVox did and listen. Do what Marcel Lebrun calls “listening at the point of need.” And build your business around your customers’ needs and not the other way around.

What do you think? Have you seen examples of this?

ShareThis

Are You a Vendor

Posted: 18 Aug 2008 11:13 AM PDT

In a post on Advertising Age, Millie Olson brings out the question of whether an agency is a vendor to a customer or a business partner. The comments are interesting, too. In a conversation today with Mike Lewis, President of the Business Marketing Association for the greater Boston area (we’re working on the New Marketing Summit together), he mentioned that PR firms are often selected by a company’s marketing department, as part of a vendor selection process, and this surprised me (mostly because I’m a technologist, not a professional marketer).

I guess I imagined that the senior team picked them out. My last boss and business partner, Jeff Pulver, most definitely picked out his own PR firm. I was on the calls, but it was his decision. So, maybe it varies per organization, or maybe PR firms are often the vendor executing on a marketing department’s strategy. (You tell ME in the comments, okay?)

Pull this back from the specifics above, and think about your use of social media, the value you’re attempting to add to a business, etc.

Are you a vendor?

It’s a bigger question to consider than you might originally think. It’s a question of how you choose to connect and do business with companies. This question affects how you talk about what you do, how you price it, and how you choose to come to the negotiating table.

To the point in Millie’s article above, she viewed herself as a partner. People in the comments section said that marketers (especially external agencies) aren’t usually partners- they’re vendors. There’s a HUGE difference between two entities thinking of each others as partners versus a company thinking of itself as the prime and you as the vendor.

If You ARE a Vendor

There are ways you need to structure your ideas and offerings and how you intend to do business, if you’re going to take the stance of being a vendor.

Remember that your job priority is your client’s success. Be clear about that in your work, in your positioning, and in how you propose things.
Build relationships with several clients. Putting all your eggs in one basket is a great way to find yourself looking for a new job.
Structure your business arrangements so that you can serve your client in a modular fashion. You might now always be the right person for the job. Don’t be a jerk and hook yourself in just because you’re the vendor on the other parts of it.
Look for opportunities where you DO offer a value-add to other organizations, and position yourself appropriately in your efforts.
Be clear in your contracts and in the deliverables. This is where vendors (especially less professional/experienced ones) get into trouble quick.

With regards to what you’re doing, are you a vendor? How are you finding the waters out there? What other advice would you offer other vendors? And what do you think about Millie’s ideas?

Photo credit, Mshades

ShareThis

Nine Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts

Posted: 18 Aug 2008 05:06 AM PDT

You’re writing and podcasting and videoblogging your face off and it’s starting to feel like no one’s paying attention. You want to get the right comments, and meaningful conversations started, or you want your peers to come and start a lively discourse. How do you get your best posts out there in such a way that people will come by and add to the body of work? (Note first that I’ve said “best posts” and not “every post.” If you abuse any of this, it goes poorly for you pretty quickly.) I have nine ideas to share your best posts in ways that aren’t heavy-handed, and aren’t likely to get you tuned out by the people of your various communities.

Nine Ways to Promote Your Blog Posts

Bookmark your best posts on Delicious. Once it’s in there, there’s a chance someone might happen upon it.
Stumble your best posts on StumbleUpon. Some folks disagree with stumbling your own work. The way I feel okay with it is that I stumble approximately 9 other people’s great blog posts to every one of my own.
Post an intriguing title and link to the post in LinkedIn’s status message.
If your post is about a specific industry or relates to other great blogs, find a recent blog post that has related information. (Now, this is different than what you MIGHT normally do, so pay attention). In the URL part of the sign-up form, put the link to your post, not your blog in general. In the comment body, don’t talk about your amazing post. Just offer genuine commentary on the post you read, and share your thoughts and ideas. Repeat: don’t mention the post. (If your comment is great and worthy, people will click through and check it out.)
Share your post on Facebook. I really like BlogCast, which used to be FlogBlog. It’s got a nice interface.
Share your post in FriendFeed automatically, and let the amazing community there decide if it’s interesting.
Try Zemanta. Zemanta is a blogging tool that either adds on to your browser (Firefox only, I think), or comes now as a WordPress plugin. It allows you to find related stories and post them at the bottom of a post. When you’re part of the Zemanta community, I believe your stories also go into their list of potentially related stories. I’ve seen traffic coming in from Zemanta-recommended links.
Don’t forget Twitter. I find lots of my traffic comes from Twitter, especially because I don’t ever just post a link. I ask questions, inspire comments, etc.
Write blog posts that others will find useful. I know it’s not a technology answer, but it’s the truth. If your posts aren’t that useful to other people, they won’t be popular. People won’t care. If you’re re-blogging news that several other larger sites have covered, who cares? If you’re telling us about your day at college, who cares (unless you’re a great writer)? Make it really good, useful stuff, and we’ll come along for the ride.

**Update: Here’s what people on Twitter said you should do:

twitter answers1

twitter answers2

Perhaps you have some other ways to promote? Do you have any recommendations? Do you have disagreement with the ways I shared above? Let’s talk about it.

Photo credit, KungPaoCajun

ShareThis

An Ignoble Experiment

Pages

Sponsor

2008/08/19

[chrisbrogan.com]

[chrisbrogan.com]