Social Media

How digital marries analog in social media

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Nothing crystallizes an idea like doodles and notes in a notebook. I tend to have a lot of them, in all shapes and for a variety of purposes.

But I never realized how a humble notebook/sketchbook might fit my “think digital, act analog” mantra. Until I saw this, from a Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based designer and blogger Mike Rohde.

Rohde condensed the events he attended at SXSWi, in Austin Texas, into sketches and notes in a moleskin sketchbook. Says Rhodes, “while sketchnotes capture concentrated concepts for each session well, I think they’re even better at awakening ideas stored in the minds of session attendees.”

The fact that he’s scanned the pages and made them available online on his blog, and on Flickr takes it a step further by sharing his experience, to “awaken” ideas in those who couldn’t be there. Analog and digital aren’t mutually exclusive as many make it seem. Meeting reminders in Microsoft Outlook won’t reduce our love of sticky notes. I really like JJot and ToDoPub but none of these digital tools will make me abandon the simple, inspiring spiral-bound notebook.

Quotes for the week ending 15 March, 2008

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“This is the wrong image, folks.”

Josh Bernoff, of Forrester, complaining (“People are not bees”) about the gross misuse of the bee image among advocates of social activity

“Each of Spitzer’s words was accompanied by a rush of camera clicks.”

Report on the resignation over a prostitution scandal, of New York governor, Elliot Spitzer.

“Airborne is basically an overpriced, run-of-the-mill vitamin pill that’s been cleverly, but deceptively, marketed.”

David Schardt, Center for Science in the Public Interest on Airborne’s $ 23.5 million settlement with the FTC for false advertising.

“The usual way for a newspaper writer to weasel out of such a request is to say that it is not a “local” issue.”

E. J. Montini, in The Arizona Republic, on a reader asking him to display the nine zeros in $12,000,000,000 (when referencing the amount the US spends on two wars each month) and why he complied.

“Try doing what I do for a living … It’s not that easy.”

Journalist Sarah Lacy, in an all downhill interview with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at South By Southwest convention in Austin, Texas. The audience started heckling her, some started dancing.

“I now see myself as The Curator of Conversations.”

Businessweek writer Bruce Nussbaum, commenting on how his approach to journalism has changed. He was commenting on the Sarah Lacy incident.

How not to interview a rockstar

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Saturday’s unfortunate interview at the South By Southwest Interactive technology summit in Austin, Texas may go down as one of the most Twittered incidents. But it will also be remembered as one of the dumbest ways to interview a rock star CEO.

Sarah Lacy seems to have done her homework on the interviewee, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, but didn’t get a good reading of the audience. Going by several reports, she:

  • Inserted herself into the story
  • Annoyed the interviewee
  • Annoyed the audience
  • Seemed uncertain of her facts
  • Alluded to the wisdom of the crowds (Digg) as “mob rule”
  • Exceeded her time

All this from someone who fully understands what the Web 2.0 is all about. (Her book on silicon Valley and the rise of Web 2.0 will be out shortly.)

Bruce Nussbaum of Businessweek summed up the incident well -pointing out to Lacy making the fatal error of “playing an old, traditional, mainstream journalist role” when talking to someone in an entirely new media space. Maybe this interview technique would have worked with a Steve Ballmer, but definitely not with Mr. Facebook.

To be fair, Lacy’s interview with Digg founders later on was totally different. But there was no audience to heckle her –she did the interview strolling along downtown Austin.

Southwest Airline keeps up the conversation

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

With apologies to T.S. Eliot, March is the cruelest month of the year.

One week before the other Eliot stepped down in the middle of a scandal, and Geraldine Ferraro played an “accidental” race card,” Southwest Airlines put three employees on paid leave and grounded 41 planes. With such an inspired management team, it has never needed to get to this level of damage control. At the Southwest blog, Nuts About Southwest, they have done an admirable job of addressing unflattering issues in the past. They are one of the few companies that allow employees and not just the marketing or PR types to be the voice of the organization. But on this issue, the lawyers seem to have been dragged in and scuttled the bloggers to the back of the plane.

Last week’s post “We take safety seriously” (about a voluntary disclosure by the airline of cracks in 2007) began with “Friends…” but had language that was more lawyered than the usual blog talk from pilots, ground staff and flight crew. This week the blog was a cut-and-paste outlet for its press releases.

Through all this, one thing they are doing a great job of is allowing readers/passengers to leave comments, many of them unflattering. Some readers have challenged the critics, but at least there is a conversation going on.

IABC Phoenix Social Media Seminar

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IABC Phoenix is bringing back Shel Holtz for another jam-packed session on social media. I attended the last one in 2006, so I highly recommend this.

Shel isn’t just an authority on social media, he’s a hands-on user. If you read his blog, or listen to his podcast (co-hosted with Neville Hobson also an IABC member) you’ll see. Things move way to fast in the social media space. You’ll learn to not just keep up with all those flavors of social media -the RSS, the wikis, the avatars –but how put some of them to good use.

The Topic: Communications & Social Media: Next Steps

When: April 8th, 2008

Cost: $40 for IABC members  ($125 for non members)

Register: Here 

My Social Bookmarking project

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In the last two weeks I have been adding Del.icio.us tags at a rapid clip for my work at ASU’s Decision Theater. The initial purpose was selfish. I read a lot, and access content at a variety of locations –a laptop at work, at the library, at home, and very often at someone else’s workstation. I have grown tired of telling people to “send me a link to that article.” Tired because people sometimes forget, which then means a lot of back and forth emails etc.

Social bookmarking solves a lot if this. The quick easy was would be for me use and encourage other communicators across our four campuses to use my delicious tag “decisiontheater” when they see something. (Yes they could use others like Newsvine, StumbleUpon, Redditt and Technorati etc.) That way it shows up when I login to Delicious from any location, and I don’t have to look up different lists of Favorites on different browsers. Reciprocally, I have been asking colleagues to tell me what tag they use, so that I too could be their eyes and ears, and create social bookmarks for their school, business unit, faculty etc.

There are other movements attempting to formalize the business of link-sharing. Publish2 is one of them. It’s mission is:

“to bring all of the world’s journalists onto one common web platform and community, one that empowers journalists to discover, organize, and rank the most important news — to benefit your own reporting, your newsroom, and all news consumers on the web.”

The project is still in beta, and it will be more than Digg or Delicious. I like the crowdsourcing flavor it brings. Which is what my mini project is all about –tapping into the wisdom of the ASU Communication crowd, so to speak.

Strategic Planning – telling “stories” about the future

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In the age of GPS, who needs a road map? In the age of short term bumps and market shifts, why even bother with the long view?

Strategic planning is not so much about looking down the road and plotting your next move, but using the long perspective to sharpen the tools we use today to get there. That “road” won’t be the same by the time you arrive at the intersection, but you would know what to make of the resurfaced terrain.

We think about this all the time, here at the Decision Theater. We call it Scenario Planning, which is slightly more complex than strategic planning. Why? Because it involves systems thinking, and gives you (the client) a look at different what-if scenarios that help refine the one plan you eventually settle for.

I recently came across Dennis McDonald’s A short definition of strategic planning that took into consideration social media.

But the best definition of scenario planning I have seen comes from the World Economic Forum, which says thus:

“Scenarios are stories about the future. They are not attempts to predict the future; rather, they aim to sketch the boundaries of the plausible.”

Road maps, both the folded street versions and business kinds, are not always inspiring. Scenarios have inbuilt stories that people could relate to.

Quotes of the week ending 8 March, 2008

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“Obamicans.” “McCainicrats”

Former White House chief of staff Karl Rove in the Wall Street Journal, about needeing to watch Republicans who back Barack Obama and Democrats who like John McCain, respectively.

“So, I think they have to spin this as best they can, but the reality is still the reality.”

David Axelrod, chief strategist for the Obama campaign, on Clinton’s win in Ohio and Texas this Tuesday.

“We are all living in the middle of a paradigm shift.”

Andrew Leckey, Director of the National Center for Business Journalism, on the role of journalists, at a workshop in Phoenix, Arizona.

“it’s no doubt true that many PR & advertising agencies don’t, in fact, ‘get it’ yet … But it is also true that many clients don’t get it yet, either.“

Todd Defren, PR Squared, commenting on the fact that marketers want to put social media into the bucket of metrics and campaigns.

“We can also look forward to flexible screens, holographic projection and LED wallpaper that allows any flat surface to function as a display.”

Bill Thompson, on the technology of teaching.

“In the end advertising isn’t about the click.”

Mike Leo, CEO of Operative, in Businessweek, on the slowdown in Google’s advertising’s pay-per-performance model.

“Haven’t you people learned the art of pretending that you know what you’re doing?”

Cathy Taylor, on why ad agencies (some of whom occasionally blog) are not walking the talk about social media.

“A message is one-way communication and a conversation is not. Rather, a conversation is like verbal tennis where words and ideas bounce back and forth between both parties.”

Andrea Goulet, commenting on the book Now is gone.

Storytelling formulas at business writing workshop

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Aren’t we all storytellers! Business communicators and PR people aren’t the only ones with stories to tell. At a weekly management meeting I often hear a response to a complicated question that goes: “Ok, so here’s the story…” Or take reports. The most interesting executive summaries I have read have a beginning-middle-end format, and one more element –the cliff-hanger to get you to read the rest of the 15-page document. (Conversely, the most boring ones have bullet points and stats. The do the job, but they don’t light a fire.)

And my point is? Yesterday I attended a workshop by the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. It was on “High intensity business coverage” and dealt with the finer points of finding, crafting and publishing business stories. Terrific speakers, with amazing takeaways for writers, a very good cross section of attendees, including some the storytellers a.k.a. journalists I am familiar with from The Arizona Republic.

In one session, writing coach Dick Weiss talked about the ingredients of an A1 story: Action, narrative, dialog, passion, character, theme. But what stuck in my mind are two other elements he recommended –tension and quirkiness. Weiss has another nugget: “Start where the readers start” because it addresses their values, and the what’s-in-it-for-me question.

Storytelling isn’t a new skill. If you’re a parent you’re probably a master at it. Every night I need to invent a story for my daughter at bedtime and one day she gave me the ideal recipe: “Could you make it a little scary, but give it a happy ending?” From then on, storytelling has been a breeze. Sprinkle tension, bring about a resolution, fade to black… Since yesterday, I’m working on the quirkiness thing.

Obama, and the iPhone generation

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Will a poster be influence the choice of the next president of the United States?

You can sense the cult-like passion these days for Brand Obama. The icon, the metaphor, the human equivalent of the iPhone for a lot of young voters.

The icon status is not accidental. Not that is contrived, either. Take this famous Shepard Fairey poster that’s showing up on the campaign –as you see here on a story about the energized voters at UT Austin. It was created by Mr. Fairey who was not involved with the Obama campaign.

It tells you something about the role of user-generated content that’s matured at a perfect time. Before the mother of all cult brands, the iPhone, was released, Apple fans raced to create designs of what they believed the iconic brand would look like.

Once upon a time presidents and prime ministers were more or less positioned and branded by ad agencies and PR strategists. The famous “Labor isn’t working” poster by Saatchi & Saatchi for Margaret Thatcher comes to mind. This year in the US elections, the branding -if you could still call it that– is in the hands of the people.

Sure, the Clinton and Obama campaigns pays big money for ridiculous he-said-she-said ads. But what’s remembered, talked about, spread virally (the “I have a crush on Obama” and “Yes we can” videos) have been created and launched by citizen campaigners on their own dime.

Speaking of shiny new objects, people camped out to catch a glimpse of, and vote with their pocketbooks for the iPhone. That same crowd –young people –seems all too eager to stand in line to vote for another “advanced communication device.”