CopyDiva

Here are some interesting posts that I have found over the last few days. How do I find my links? Certainly not through RSS — I don’t have time to peruse all that content. I get interesting reads from tweets from the people I follow, links posted on Facebook by friends and also by using Filtrbox, a great little tool for social media/online content monitoring that was started by local Boulder entrepreneur Ari Newman. I search for content related to social media and also online surveys (because I do some consulting for another local start up called SurveyGizmo).

Challenges of corporate blogging: Jeremiah’s post certainly hits on some of the exact concerns that many marketers at large companies face. I seem to talk about this with marketers at least a few times a week.

Targeting social media: On the mediapost blog, a Q&A with Jim Calhoun from Popular Media that talks about some of the interesting things they are doing for customers using behavioral targeting. I had the pleasure of meeting Jim last week, smart guy with a great sense of humor, which is always a good combination.

Looking for a social media job? (well, now that you mention it…yes) Jim Durbin has started a head hunting firm to match social media experts with companies that want them. Seems like a good idea.

Kami Huyse wrote a great post today on the good, bad and ugly of being a consultant in the marketing/pr world, instead of an employee. Couldn’t agree more with her thought, but a few more of mine:

• no politics: this is a definite pro about being a consultant. You’re hired in to do a job, or even a long term contract, so the internal politics can just roll off you like yesterday’s leftover cinammon buns
• multi-tasking: you really must be an organized multi-tasker, because you will do everything from selling, writing proposals, finances/bookkeeping, cold calling (when you are new to consulting) and prospecting…oh, and did I mention that all the business you close you either have to do yourself or sub it out to a trusted vendor?

All said, if you can manage the self-discipline you need, consulting can be very lucrative and rewarding, and can pave the way for greater opportunities as well.

The other night, my S.O. was torturing me with bad music from the 70’s and 80’s. One particularly bad song that made its way into the cue was “One Toke Over the Line.” So who exactly recorded that song? Definitely a one-hit wonder group called Brewer & Shipley. Not only are they a one-hit wonder, I honestly wish I never had to hear that song again. Kind of the same way I feel about 90% of heavy metal bands from the 80’s but that’s a different blog post…

So the one-hit wonder of music got me thinking about the one-hit wonders in social media marketing and buzz. You know, the ones you hear about as big successes that never seem to work again. And frankly, it has been so long since I have heard one that I cannot even think of any, but I am certain there is a YouTube example, a Facebook apps example, a Tell-a-friend example, a corporate blog example, a Twitter, you get the idea.

So, what I am hoping is that now that at least some hype is dying down, a few things have and are happening:

1. Companies are being more thoughtful about their social media engagement
2. Companies are getting down to the real business of gaining an understanding of social media tools and creating strategies based on their customer, partner and vendor requirements

Though both of these statements are probably true for a small portion of companies, I hate to say that I still regularly hear from people that “My boss says we need a blog” or “Our agency says that everyone needs a presence in Second Life.” Or something else equally thoughtless. Sigh.

Remember folks, these are tactics. Tactics are not a strategy. Like everything in business, it helps to have a strategy that you go after with specific tactics. Tactics for their own sake are bound to produce disappointing results.

Thanks to Jeremiah Owyang’s tweet last week, I found out about BrandTags, an interesting experiment being pulled together by Noah Brier. Basically, you visit the site and get presented with a logo or brand name. You type in the word or phrase which comes to mind when you think of the brand. It aggregates all the data from what people enter and creates tag clouds, based on the frequency of what people say, with the largest words or phrases being the most frequent from all taggers.

There are a few very interesting things to me about what I am seeing on BrandTags:

• stalwart brands in CPG are easy to identify based on their tags: I tested my mad branding skills, and was correct 100% of the time for consumer products such as McDonalds, Burger King, Coca-Cola, Gatorade, etc. Interestingly enough, even though the biggest tags for most of these products were negative (for McDonalds it was fat), their brand message was still easy enough to pick out. Overall, their strong efforts in branding, I suppose, have paid off, as the message still comes through.

• Internet brands were difficult to decipher: I could just suck at it, but, the tags for msn and for Facebook were very similar - I thought Facebook was Myspace. To me, this speaks of the more difficult task of brand marketers in the constant state of flux that is Internet properties. Its hard to have clear branding when your brand promise is changing ever 3 to 6 months. Also, some Internet brands — such as ReadWriteWeb, Gawker, Digg, had large tags for question marks, meaning they have no brand recognition with many of the participants in this experiment.

Now, I have no idea how many people are participating in this experiment, but clearly these are Internet-savvy people who probably use many of the Internet properties listed, just like me. And, who spend more time online than watching TV, where most of those consumer brands live.

I am a rare user of many of these consumer brands and I spend more time online than watching TV. So what gives? Are CPG messages still so ubiquitous that I cannot otherwise tune out? What would Rob Walker have to say about this?

Last week, I attended the WOMM-U Conference in Miami, put on by WOMMA. There were some interesting case studies presented, and for me, it was an excellent opportunity to network with some of my cohorts in the social media and word-of-mouth marketing space.

The format for parts of both days was different than most conferences, and had the potential to be great learning experiences. There were interactive sessions with a group leader, where a particular focus was the starting point for people to share their own experiences and ask questions of the group. For example, Lynn Eastep from Fleishman Hillard headed up a session on KPI’s of social media marketing efforts. She did an excellent job of framing the discussion for people, but with a 30-minute format and 12 people, it made it very difficult to learn too much. An hour would have been a better chunk of time. Another interesting session was put together by Jason Anello of Yahoo and Rohit Bhargava of Oglivy PR, on learning from social media successes — and failures. They asked the group for examples of social media tools that people have used to engage an audience or create buzz. A few people — including me — shared, but I felt pressured to be quick with the 30 minute time limit. Both Rohit and Jason shared small failures from experiments they tried on Facebook.

The last session I went to, on community-building tools, was brought together by Leslie Forde of Communispace and Bonin Bough of Weber Shandwick. They pulled together a nice packet of info for people to take with them, and showed a few example communities — both private (from Communispace customers) and public (like the Alli community).

My feedback on these sessions is this: as someone who has an understanding of the space and is immersed in it, it was hard for me to gain value from the setting. It might have worked better if there were an newbie and non-newbie tracks, or even if the time had been extended.

I commend WOMMA for trying out this format, and I think it has good possibilities with some more thought behind it.

My favorite moments of WOMM-U are all personal:

• Finally meeting Erik Rabasca from PHD in person, and getting to share his birthday dinner at Joe’s Stone Crab
• Dinner with Sonya Schweitzer from AOL and Kevin Burke from Lucid Marketing
• Harassing Bonin Bough from Weber Shandwick about the drink he still owes me (or, maybe I owe him?)
• Playing Guitar Hero with J.C. Hutchins
• Connecting with Kate and Jerry from Nielsen
• Chatting, if only briefly, with Lynn Eastep