Monday Holiday Adventures

A glimpse of some favorite adventures from around the Web-o-Sphere today.

- "You shouldn't have to work today." There are those (almost 20,000 at last check) that suggest the US should take a hangover holiday on the Monday after Super Bowl. What say you?

- Silicon Alley Insider (via TechCrunch) writes concisely "Facebook's Plan To Build A Real Email System And Attack Gmail Is Brilliant." It's about Project titan, presumably Facebook's new email platform.

- How to make an awesome corporate blog? Forget the 'corporate blog' and just make a great blog! That's one of several tips that start here.

- Mark Ferrari's coffee is top notch, A1, mega awesome. It's good coffee! See it in a few PHX-area Costcos again after Feb 22.

- "But look underneath the surface and something interesting is truly afoot. Consumers across the globe are sharing media on Twitter and Facebook, friending relative strangers, becoming fans of their cities and their favorite shows on Facebook and talking with their public officials on Twitter. It seems obvious then, that where consumers are, business must follow." A good read on social media for business at Inc Technology from Saumil Mehta.

More News Content coming via Facebook

Brand Republic (and others) writes:
"Facebook has quietly become the fourth largest distributor of news content on the web as people spend more time on social networking websites. Facebook sits behind Google, Yahoo! and MSN as the place where people get their news online, according to research from Hitwise. Last year Facebook overtook Google News rising from just over 1% in January 2009 to 3.5% last week."

Definitely a big week for Facebook as it celebrated its sixth birthday, passing 400 million users!



From Facebook's blog post:
"In addition to reading news on Facebook, you can share news with your friends on external sites with Facebook Connect. Outlets like The Huffington Post, The Washington Post, USA Today and countless blogs have become more social by adding Facebook Connect to their websites and iPhone applications. You can sign in with your Facebook login to see what articles your friends are reading and comment on articles with your authentic identity.

Startups are also using the power of Facebook Connect to provide social news experiences. Daily Perfect is a personalized news website that you can sign into with Facebook Connect, and it will deliver news tailored to you based on your Facebook profile. For example, I've included in my Facebook profile that my interests are "San Francisco," "technology" and "religion," and Daily Perfect surfaces current affairs related to those interests."

McCain for Senator 2010 new site

Big news for Gangplank stalwarts Forty Agency as it has unveiled its work for AZ Senator John McCain's new re-election site - and it rocks. I'm grabbing screenshots from the link above for you to see some of the planning that went on below.



I caught wind of Forty's news last fall that the agency had won the bid to be part of the creative team to re-do McCain's old web site into something bigger, brighter and shinier the senator's 2010 re-election campaign. It was a big public deal and a big step for the agency's future.

Creative consultancy OVO, which describes itself as "specializing in naming, brand identity and strategic design for businesses seeking to launch, grow or reinvent themselves" was a key partner w/Forty in the project. OVO actually 'designed' the site working from Forty's initial site architecture, then Forty built the site from OVO's designs.

Forty's Kim Stearn elaborates:
"Forty developed the overall strategy and approach for the site, and sketched prototype layouts for each of the key pages on the site. We sent the sketches over to our friends at OVO, the campaign’s branding agency, who designed the basic look of the site around the campaign identity they had established. Forty used this design direction as a baseline for developing the rest of the site." Forty shared some of the planning processes involved in setting up the site (pics below).





"The new site features people-focused content that will continue to be enhanced as new features and content get added to the site. There’s also an interactive “video wall,” where supporters can record online videos to show their support."



Congratulations to the Forty team, their partners and the contractors who assisted. May the site help Senator McCain in his efforts to get re-elected.

How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business (Inc Mag)

INC mag has a good beginner's guide for businesses trying to figure out how to assimilate social networking into its overall business strategy. In the article, it asks...

"Here are a few basic questions to ask yourself when forming your social networking strategy:
1. What are the needs of my business? Hopefully, you’re not putting your company name on a social networking account just to send messages back and forth to former high school classmates, so there has to be an impetus. Figure out what your needs are. Are you short-staffed? Is your advertising budget running thin?

2. What am I using the site for? After you’ve established your needs, consider the primary goal of your social networking strategy. Do you want to recruit employees for a certain department? Do you want to market a new line of products? Do you want to connect to more people in your industry?

3. Whose attention am I trying to get? Okay, so you want to market that new line of products, for example. You still need to know your target audience for that product, and with more than 300 million users on Facebook, you'll need to narrow your focus.

Later in the piece, it breaks down the different social networks, and asks which one is right for your business, and which ones would best fulfill the requirements of your strategy. There are also sections on social network marketing, social network promotions and using social networks for recruitment. Definitely worth a click through.

Most Companies Don't Have A Social Media Policy

eMarketer writes today about a recent study by Manpower Associates that surveyed companies in the Americas, Asia and Europe and found that...
"...only one-fifth of the companies surveyed had a formal policy for employee use of external social networking sites. Firms in the Americas and Asia-Pacific were somewhat ahead on this front, but the majority of respondents in all regions had no policy in place. Among companies that did have a policy, 63% claimed it was effective in combating lost productivity."



And while it productivity is a concern for management, it seems that reputation management is also an area of interest to companies' social media policies. But so far, reputation hits are minimal,according to the report. From the overview: "Despite stories about people being fired for committing social networking gaffes, just 4% of companies worldwide said their reputation had been hurt by employee use of social networks. That rate was doubled in the Americas but still represented only a tiny percentage of respondents."

If you are a business owner or company manager, it's time to create a social media policy straightaway. Mashable kindly offers its list of 10 social media policy musts.

Extreme Digital Marketing - Where Email Slams Into Social Media

Coming up next week (Feb 9th) in Phoenix is a session put on by two leading local Web guys - Ron Cates of Constant Contact and Lon Safko, co-author of The Social Media Bible. The two are hosting Extreme Digital Marketing - Where Email Slams Into Social Media at the National Bank of Arizona.

"Heard about social media? Do you know where to start? Do you know how to integrate it with your conventional marketing? Do you really know how to maximize your email campaigns? This event brings you the best of email marketing and social media brought to you by the country's leading experts! Understand the importance trusted networks, blogging, and Twitter. Learn why segmenting, day-parting, and the 1.54 second rule is critical to the success of your email conversations"

Tickets are $50 and can be bought at the Eventbrite link above. The two are also doing a second session two days later on February 11th as well.

If it's 'Splinternet', is it Broken?

Wow. I opened my eyes and learn today that the wonderful, joyous discovery and education platform we call the Internet is breaking, faltering, splitting. In a fine blog post, Forrester Sr. VP Josh Bernoff calls it 'the Splinternet' and suggests that it's due to new devices and new platform walls. He wrote last week:

"Web marketing has grown since 1995, based on the idea that everything is connected. Click-throughs, ad networks, analytics, search-engine optimization -- it all works because the Web is standardized. Google works because the Web is standardized. Not any more. Each new device has its own ad networks, format, and technology. Each new social site has its login and many hide content from search engines.

We call this new world the Splinternet (with a nod to Doc Searls and Rich Tehrani, who used the term before us with a somewhat different meaning). It will splinter the Web as a unified system. The golden age has lasted 15 years. Like all golden ages, it lasted so long we thought it would last forever. But the end is in sight."

Josh dispenses a bit of advice for this new era we're entering:
- pick your devices carefully
- rethink analytics, links, and measurement
- embrace the new platforms

If you're a Forrester client, you can read the whole report at this link.

Using Twitter to Drive Restaurant/bar business

Social Media consultant/educator Chris Brogan had one of his cool Kitchen Table interviews with Milwaukee restaurant/bar owner Joe Sorge, and in the video below, Joe offers up some of his tips on using Twitter to help drive traffic and business at his several restaurants. It's all good and worth a view.

Quit Wandering! Start Shipping!

Seems like a good day for inspirational words from Seth Godin, whose new book "Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?" is out this week. This video below of Seth speaking comes from The 99 Percent site, which is the site for a 99 Percent conference being held in NYC on April 15-16. Looks like a good conference to get a kick behind all those projects you need to finish.



That's the crux of Seth's talk above. Get projects out the door. He discusses that we all have enough creativity - its time to start shipping! Godin relates a story about entrepreneurs who say "When you run out of time or run out of money, you ship." Stop being a 'wandering generality' and START SHIPPING! And if you ship on time and on budget, you'll get to do it again. Start Shipping! Don't let all the others thrash about a product or site near the end - if you have to thrash about with a product, do it at the beginning. START SHIPPING!

[2/1 UPDATE - Just came across this great blog post by Forrester's Josh Bernoff titled "You need to read Seth Godin's Linchpin. Or be a cog in the machine. Your choice." Here's a snippet:
"The real reason I like this book is that after nearly 30 years of work I have arrived in a place Seth would describe as a linchpin and I am loving it. I have always been as passionate and creative as I can, just to amuse myself, why work if it's boring. This is a childish quality but I retain it at age 51. On the other hand, I have learned some discernment that I sure didn't have in 1982. Every quarter, my boss (and I have had many) sets goals with me related to what the company needs. At the end of the quarter, often, what I accomplish is very different from what we thought would be useful. But typically, that boss looks at what I did and says "that was what we needed" and rewards me anyway. I cannot be a cog, and fortunately, they have recognized that a cog is not what they need. In the long term, all of my success so far has come from this sort of thinking."]

Building and Protecting Reputation 2010 - Feb 24-25, Scottsdale

Several times Monday at Social Media AZ, I heard the emphasis that using social media is not an end all, but very much a 'be all' ie. a key component of your overall interactive marketing strategy. And to make it successful, you need your basic building blocks in place, right? Perhaps it's time to get your company's executive communications and reputation in order before getting out and being 'social' with it.

And that's where an upcoming two-day conference "Building and Protecting Reputation 2010" might appeal to a lot of corporate communicators, marketers, PR pros, speech writers and others. Subtitled "Executive Communications and Speechwriting in the New Media Age", Building and Protecting Reputation 2010 will look at your organization's reputation - what you do, what you say, and what other people say about you. The organizer says the conference is a short course into the dynamics of organizational reputation, how to manage it, and about the role communications and public relations can and should play in helping senior management and employees build and protect your organization’s reputation.

"This is the first year for the REPUTATION conference in Scottsdale and we are expecting this to be a premier annual learning event," said John Gerstner, President of Communintelligence, the conference organizer. "We have some of the very top experts on executive communications and speechwriting on the agenda, the new Henkel headquarters venue is an architectural delight and we've partnered with the Cicero Speechwriting Awards and local IABC and PRSA chapters for added value. There's also a cocktail reception under the stars and an evening dine around for networking."

If you're in any way involved in helping your organization set its communications agenda, then this is the place to be at the end of next month. The conference will be held February 24-25, 2010 at Henkel Consumer Goods Inc. Headquarters, Scottsdale, Arizona - that's the building right off Scottsdale Road at the 101 in North Phoenix metro. Registration is here - you can save $200 off the fee if you register before this Saturday, January 30th. You can also save more if you become a premium member of the Communintelligence circle.