Web Ink Now

End of Summer Fun: Lawyers and social media mash it up

Since we're at the end of summer, it's time for some frivolous fun.

Have you noticed that lawyers and social media don't mix very well? There are exceptions of course, like Grant Griffiths.

What I hear most often from people who ask questions at my keynote speeches and my New Rules of Marketing seminar is that when lawyers get involved in providing opinions to companies on activities like corporate blogging, it results in so many rules, regulations, and draconian controls that people just don't blog. I know of Fortune 500 companies with zero corporate blogs because of the legal eagles' opinions.

So how deliciously fun is it to consider what happened to mega law firm Nixon Peabody recently. From the company’s site: "Nixon Peabody LLP is one of the largest multipractice law firms in the United States, with offices in sixteen cities and approximately seven hundred attorneys collaborating across twenty-five major practice areas."

The company was recognized as one of Fortune Magazine's best companies to work for (congratulations guys!) so those wacky lawyers commissioned a song to celebrate.

Now I'd admit that my musical taste may be offensive to some (The Clash, The Ramones, Grateful Dead, Yellowman and Fathead, Talking Heads are a few that come to mind) so I'm not the best one to judge the merits law professional celebratory lyrics set to a 1980s top 40 radio beat, but hey, I deserve my opinion and here it is. This song sucks. Sample lyric: "It's all about the team, it's all about respect, it all revolves around integrity, yeah."

Here is a link to an MP3 version. Friendly suggestion: Make sure to erase from your iTunes after you've heard it so you don’t startle yourself silly the next time you're in shuffle songs mode.

So now you must be asking, what's the big deal?

Turns out the song was for internal use only but was "leaked" (now that's a lawyerly term if I ever heard one) onto the Internet.

So what would you do? What would anyone with a bit of social media savvy do?
> Well, you could ignore it.
> You could laugh about it, "yeah we're just silly lawyers."
> Or what I'd suggest (if anyone at Nixon Peabody had asked) is poke fun at your own song somehow, perhaps by creating a YouTube parody of it. A lawyer rap perhaps? Now THAT would be funny and get them some positive attention.

But since these are high priced lawyers, they didn't do any of those things. Instead, they went legal. Nixon Peabody had a bit of a hissy fit when it learned that law news site Above the Law posted it and then created a YouTube version.

Nixon Peabody executives asked David Lat, the publisher of Above the Law, to remove the song because it was in violation of the firm's copyright. He refused. Soon after, the song disappeared from YouTube with a note saying it violated copyright. Then bloggers and The New York Times picked up the story. It wasn’t the song so much as the Nixon Peabody reaction that people were writing about. And that's what caused the whole thing to go viral.

Shortly after, another version appeared on YouTube that featured a short segment of the song that, (take that you dastardly lawyers!) seems to fall under the legal definition of fair use.

So here's the thing. When I need law advice, I call a lawyer. I wonder if the lawyers ever considered contacting a social media expert before they ventured into social media?

Steve Kayser proves B2B software companies can have a sense of humor

Most marketing and communications programs from business-to-business software and technology companies are dreadfully dry and painfully boring. I mean if some of these companies tried to smile at themselves, their screens would crack.

But guess what? Your buyers, no matter what sort of organization you work for, are people—real people with a sense of fun—not nameless, faceless, corporate drones. Sometimes a bit of the unusual and funny can work wonders.

Steve Kayser is a marketing executive at Cincom, one of the largest privately-held software companies in the world. He’s a master at online marketing and communications, having built the Cincom Expert Access e-zine from zero to 135,000 subscribers. Expert Access is written for senior-level corporate executives, IT and operations managers, and technology buyer committees. Cincom is a global company and Expert Access counts subscribers from dozens of countries.

Humor plays a large part.

Can you think of any other B2B software companies that have a spokes-donkey?

Or can you imagine another company in this market running a lead article in their online newsletter comparing General George Patton to Dog the Bounty Hunter? Steve Kayser does all of this and more and he proves that humor works in the B2B world.

Of course, it's not all fun and games. Cincom is a company that delivers value to its customers. Cincom has achieved 21 straight years of producing more than $100 million in revenue - the only private software company in the world to attain this lofty feat.

Steve proves humor can be used, even in B2B marketing. But it’s tricky to strike the right balance. And if you’ve never used humor before, you’ll need to start small. A spokes-chipmunk perhaps?

Disclosure: I am one of Cincom’s many outside "experts" and my writing occasionally appears in Cincom Expert Access.

Corporate dysfunction at its worst: The B2B tradeshow demo

Steve Johnson has an interesting take on the question: Why demo at trade shows?

For some markets, the tradeshow demo is very important. While I was in high school and summers during college, I worked in a cheese shop. Once a year, I went to New York for the Fancy Foods and Confection Show. Demos were all over the place, many involving tasty treats: Cheese, sausage, chocolate, coffee, and more.

Or imagine the people at Blendtec on a tradeshow floor at a kitchen equipment show. The demo would be only one minute and they would probably pull off something really fun and informative that would sell blenders.

OK, but what about B2B technology companies?

Yuk! Can you imagine anything more boring than a ten minute screen-by-screen demo by a product manager who knows all the leading, cutting-edge features of some mission-critical, flexible, and scalable solution that improves business process using industry-standard technology? Makes me want to scream in disgust!

Yes, I know that there are exceptions. But in my experience, the tradeshow demo is interruption marketing run amok and is often an excuse-fest for both buyers and sellers. The company uses it as an excuse for bad marketing and the attendee uses it as an excuse for lack of interest.

Nearly all B2B technology company tradeshow demos are conducted out of laziness. Here's how the dysfunctional process works and why B2B technology demos are so overused: Marketers don't understand buyers, the problems buyers face, or how their product helps solve these problems because they don't get out into the market. Instead these marketers are holed up in their own offices. Then the tuned out marketing person builds a demo script using reverse-engineered language that they think the buyer wants to hear based not on buyer input but on product features. During the demo they go through each feature in the product all the while spewing superlative-laden, jargon-sprinkled, gobbledygook-filled hype.

Um… This is not effective.

The decision for any marketing initiative should start with buyers and your buyer personas. What problems do your buyers have? How can your company solve those problems with technology? How do your buyers describe the solutions? I think that B2B technology product companies need to re-think the entire tradeshow experience, not just the demo. I’d ask a more fundamental question: Do you need to be at the tradeshow at all? And if so, do you really need a booth?

The web is a free 7x24 tradeshow. Consider a re-focus of efforts to blogging or a content-rich website or other online initiatives to reach buyers.

Align Corporate Communications to Achieve Business Goals - a new free ebook by David Meerman Scott

I've written a new complimentary ebook for the Dow Jones Corporate and Media Solutions group called Align Corporate Communications to Achieve Business Goals: A simple six-step process to use communications and measurement tools to drive business.

Most PR programs measure the wrong things. Agency people and in-house staff happily build "clip books" or calculate "advertising equivalency metrics" in an attempt to prove the worth of PR. However, management teams simply don't care about these forms of measurement.

What management does care about is achieving their goals for things like revenue, profit, and customer retention. Sadly, few communications strategies actually align with the organizational business goals that really matter!

This ebook lays out my approach to this alignment. The ebook is totally free with no registration requirement and is sponsored by Factiva from Dow Jones.

If you focus on the goals of your organization and build appropriate communications strategies to support the goals, then you can measure the effect of your efforts and show management, investors, and the board the results. Using media measurement and analytics help communicators to directly identify the cause and effect relationships that communications strategies have on revenue.

I hope you enjoy this ebook. The ideas are simple but powerful. People who adopt a disciplined measurement approach like this earn the respect of the management team, become a trusted advisor for the entire organization and build a successful career.

PodCamp Boston 2: Learn, share, and grow new media skills

PodCamp Boston 2 is the new media community UnConference that helps connect people interested in blogging, podcasting, social networks, video on the net, and new media together for three days to learn, share, and grow their new media skills.

PodCamp Boston 2 will be held October 26 - 28, 2007 at the Boston Convention and Expo Center and is free to attend.

I attended PodCamp Boston last year. I learned a lot and made some new friends like John Wall, CC Chapman, Owen Mack, Bryan Person, Christopher Penn and the Toronto band Uncle Seth. I'll be there again this year and look forward to meeting PodCamp leader Chris Brogan. I may present my ideas on The New Rules of PR. You can learn more on the PodCamp Boston2 Wiki.

The great thing about PodCamp is that it is for all levels of experience. Anyone just getting started with social media will benefit but so will all you veterans. PodCamp attracts podcasting, blogging, second life, twitter, and video folks. But it is also great for educators, business people, community leaders, and real world users.

Register for free to attend the event.

If Boston isn't convenient for you, check out the PodCamp Wiki to see the other locations holding a PodCamp, including NYC, Miami, UK, SF, Copenhagen, Toronto, and more.

The mass media aberration: What's old is new again

After I posted you must unlearn what you have learned yesterday, I entered into a mind opening conversation with Brian Clark that started on my blog and then went over to email. Brian helped me to realize something that I had been missing.

The new rules really aren't new.

Brian (and others who also commented and sent me emails) helped me to understand that from 2,000 years ago, nothing fundamentally has changed. Many generations ago, people communicated with each other and sold stuff (chickens perhaps) at the town square. Even 100 years ago communications was real and personal and authentic. You asked the pharmacist in your town to make you up a potion to cure your ills and you bought your linen at the local dry goods store. Personal opinions mattered.

Instead of making everything "new," the Web has brought communications back full circle to where we were 60 years ago. On the Web you can finally communicate again in the way that people respond to. What people respond to, and the way they make purchase decisions, really hasn’t changed at all.

The Web is a huge town square and blogs are like people who venture into the town pub. People communicate and share ideas and products are sold.

OK, so what's different then?

After World War Two we had a huge aberration in the form of mass media. As people in the United States focused on just three television networks as the primary way they made decisions about soap and cars and fashion, the world of marketing and PR morphed from being personal and authentic to being generic and message driven. Instead of personal communications, mass media was the "new" and communicators (like me I would admit) went a little silly trying to adapt.

So then what happened?

The whole Madison-Avenue-driven (and PR-reinforced) focus on mass media made perfectly sane people stop communicating and instead become kooky with interruption-based advertising to the masses. Even niche B2B technology marketers adopted the mass media concept and dumbed down their offerings into flexible scalable solutions for improving business process and then advertised the "solutions" in generic business magazines, hired expensive PR agencies, and sent massive direct mail campaigns to convince people that they had a problem that technology can solve.

Watching the new TV show Mad Men reminded me how we've really only been doing mass marketing since the 1960s or so. We built up a big TV-centric economy in just a few short decades and now, thanks to the Web allowing us to communicate again, we're breaking down the TV-centric economy even faster than we built it.

Yes, we still need to unlearn what we've learned in the last half century.

But rather than everything being "new," it's more like we're just going back to the way it was before mass culture made us kooky and silly.

Thanks again Brian for pointing me here. You were right all along.

As long as I'm writing about the post I did yesterday I would also like to add that while I do think that Web marketing is making communications "new" again, there is still room for the tried and true. As Kevin Grossman says, "Traditional marketing and PR is still viable and should be included in your business plan (to what degree depends on your business, target market, etc.)" I agree with Kevin that a mention in the Wall Street Journal is extremely valuable. And I also agree with Matt Gentile that PR remains a people business. "Meeting the reporter (in person) find out what they are writing about and tailor your pitch. Have some fun with the new media, but don't forget the basic principles of PR."

You must unlearn what you have learned

When I first started writing The New Rules of Marketing & PR there was significant debate about "new." Is this stuff really new or is the title just a hook? Yes, I admit that the book title was partly chosen to help position the book and generate interest.

Brian Clark over at Copyblogger was one of the first to jump in. Many people such as Brian asked: "Does marketing and PR on the Web really require 'new' thinking?"

More than ever, I am convinced the answer is "yes."

Robert Scoble, in his terrific foreword to The New Rules of Marketing & PR suggests: "It's a new world you're about to enter... if you understand how to use it you can drive buzz, new product feedback, sales, and more." I couldn’t agree more, Robert.

Some recent discussion with my friend and colleague Steve Johnson helped to solidify ideas around 'new." Steve reminded me of this quote: "You must unlearn what you have learned." – Yoda in Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back.

It can be really, really difficult to unlearn what you have learned. Which is way so many people have trouble implementing great online marketing & PR.

Don't believe me? How many spaces do you type after a period? It took me nearly a year to unlearn typing two spaces after a period. A year! Just to stop typing a space! Twenty-something years ago I learned the "old rule" - that you always type two spaces after a period. So I always typed two spaces until I started to write books and magazine articles. I was required to obey a new rule: One space only or manuscripts were rejected. Wow -- that habit was ingrained! Try making that little change yourself.

Old rule: Buy your way in with advertising

As marketing people, we've all learned rules that worked in the offline world. But to succeed on the Web using the new rules, old habits must be unlearned.

As Steve Johnson says, "Stop shouting BUY MY PRODUCT!" (people turn off overt advertising, especially online). You need to unlearn the marketing habit of constantly pitching your product. Instead create content to help people answer their problems.

Old rule: Beg your way in with PR

Your buyers are not nameless faceless metrics. They are people like you and me who want to consume valuable content.

You must unlearn the idea that media and analysts are the only ones who can tell your story. Instead, the web has made PR public again.

New Rule: Publish your way in with great content that your buyers want to consume.

> You must unlearn the use of gobbledygook about your products and services. Instead start from the problems and needs of your buyer personas.

> You must unlearn spin. Instead, understand that people crave authenticity and transparency.

> You must unlearn interrupting people with "messages." Instead, publish online content they want to consume.

> You must unlearn marketing to the masses. Instead understand who your niche buyers are and reach them with targeted Web content.

> You must unlearn being egotistical and trying to force people to adapt to your terms. Instead create online content that addresses buyer problems.

> You must unlearn the assumption that you must buy access. Instead, create something that goes viral and let millions of people tell your story for you.

> You must unlearn the idea that the "clip book" is the only way to measure your communications efforts. Instead, consider how you can reach people directly.

> You must unlearn the idea that "leads" are the only way to measure your marketing efforts. Instead, consider how you are engaging your buyers and building a position as a trusted resource.

The Gobbledygook Manifesto – revised and updated with new data

Oh jeez, not another flexible, scalable, groundbreaking, industry-standard, cutting-edge product from a market-leading, well positioned company! Ugh. I think I'm gonna puke!

Just like with a teenager's use of annoying catch phrases, I notice the same words cropping up again and again in Web sites and news releases—so much so that the gobbledygook grates against my nerves and many other people's, too. Well, duh. Like, companies just totally don't communicate very well, you know?

Alert readers of this blog and my book The New Rules of Marketing & PR will recall that in late 2006 I created The Gobbledygook Manifesto to analyze the enormous number of meaningless phrases that appear in corporate marketing and PR materials. You know what I mean (and like me, you may occasionally be guilty of writing like this: "Company X is a leader in providing flexible, scalable, mission critical solutions for improving business process using cutting edge, next generation technology").

If you haven't read the original analysis, I recommend you check out this recently published version: ChangeThis The Gobbledygook Manifesto by David Meerman Scott.

I wanted to see if there were any differences to the data in another time period. So with Dow Jones Factiva, we did another analysis for recent nine-month period. The original analysis was from January 1, 2006 through September 30, 2006 and the new analysis from November 1, 2006, to July 31, 2007.

The analysis by Factiva uses text mining tools to analyze news releases distributed by the major news release distribution services such as Business Wire, Marketwire, PrimeNewswire, and PR Newswire sent by companies in North America (a separate analysis was also conducted for Europe). For the revised analysis, Factiva analyzed each release in its database that had been sent to one of the North American news release wires it distributes for the period from November 1, 2006, to July 31, 2007.

Gobbledygook Analysis for North America. Click chart for larger image.

It turns out there were more releases sent during the period. A lot more. In the first analysis (Jan 2006 through Sept 2006), 388,000 press releases were sent in North America while in the new period (Nov 2006 thru July 2007) 440,500 releases were sent. Good news for the press release distribution companies! I'd like to think that I've played a role in goosing the number of releases because more than 250,000 people have downloaded my ebook The New Rules of PR: How to create a press release strategy for reaching buyers directly.

The percentage of releases containing at least one of the gobbledygook phrases went down slightly, from 19% to 17.5%. Clearly these phrases are still overused.

The words mentioned most often were similar to last year’s analysis. In North America – next generation (10,427 mentions), robust (8868 mentions), flexible (8515 mentions), and world class (7887 mentions) were the leaders.

The words mentioned in Europe were virtually identical in their frequency compared to North America.

Announcing my new one-day seminar: The New Rules of Marketing

Based on tremendous reader feedback to my bestselling book The New Rules of Marketing & PR and audience reactions from the hundreds of keynote presentations I've delivered, I have developed a one-day seminar called the New Rules of Marketing™. The seminar is a great way for people to work with me to take a deeper dive into the new rules approach to marketing and PR. And I'm thrilled to partner in the development and delivery of the course with Pragmatic Marketing, the leader in technology product management and marketing.

The New Rules of Marketing seminar teaches marketers how to harness the power of online marketing using blogs, viral marketing, podcasts, video, search engine marketing and online thought-leadership. Participants will learn why marketing on the web is different. Rather than following the old rules of command-and-control, message-driven advertising and PR, learn to speak directly to your customers and buyers with targeted messages that help them solve problems instead of bombarding them with advertising they'll likely ignore.

Learn more about the New Rules of Marketing seminar.

In New Rules of Marketing, learn a step-by-step framework for building an online marketing strategy and a tactical, actionable plan to reach your buyers directly.

Download the brochure in PDF format.

The New Rules of Marketing seminar is taught in public settings around North America so you can attend on your own or with several colleagues. And the course will also be available for corporations and groups where I deliver onsite at your location.

See seminar locations and register to attend.
September 18, Boston, MA
October 12, San Francisco, CA
October 26, Reston, VA
November 9, Boston, MA
November 30, Atlanta, GA

I've partnered with Pragmatic Marketing because the company is famous for teaching a practical, market-driven approach to marketing and product management. My partnership allows me to focus on developing and delivering the seminar instead of worrying about the business aspects of running a seminar company. Founded in 1993, Pragmatic Marketing has trained more than 40,000 product management and marketing professionals, with more than 90% of alumni indicating the training as essential or very useful to their careers.

Here are a few reactions from early attendees to the New Rules of Marketing seminar:
> "Wonderful presenter, clear and entertaining."
> "Actionable, new information that was well presented."
> "The constant examples were a great way to demonstrate."
> "Very surprised at all the new technology we are not using. I can't wait to read the book."
> "Great! David is passionate about the topic. The real life examples are invaluable."
> "I had to pee really badly, but waited until the scheduled break because I was afraid I would miss something!"

8 tips to make your YouTube video go viral

Have you seen Will It Blend? It's a crazy series of videos by Blendtec, a small blender manufacturer. The series has been seen by millions of people. My favorite is Will It Blend? – iPhone. If you haven't seen it yet, do yourself a favor and take a minute to watch. This YouTube video has been seen 1.6 million times.

Recently I appeared on MSNBC Your Business with JJ Ramberg to discuss how to make your YouTube video go viral. Viral marketing is the phenomenon of other people passing along your ideas to friends via email or blogs or other online means…for free! You can watch my appearance here. My 14-year-old daughter said that they should have taken away the swivel chair! (You’ll see what she means if you watch).

Here are some tips to make video go viral. Creating a video is easy and it is free to post onto YouTube. All you need is a simple $300 digital video camera and a YouTube account.

Most importantly: Your video needs to be funny or amazing or remarkable or have some fascinating information or be controversial. Basically the video needs a reason for people to pass it on. If you can find pass along value connected to your organization and its products, great. I'm not a fan of stupid contests or celebrity endorsements unrelated to a company and its products.

Tip # 1 – Homemade is just fine
You don’t need to hire a professional. A homemade quality video can work great. But plan ahead and shoot several takes to get it right.

Tip #2 –Your video should be no longer then 2 minutes (preferably less)
Think very short. Although YouTube will accept a video that is less than 10 minutes, smaller than 100MB try to make the video between 30 seconds and 2 minutes.

Tip #3 -- Make your description clear and specific.
To best promote your video, you'll want its text description on YouTube to be accurate and interesting. Use descriptive keywords and language that people will find when they search for videos like yours. And use the correct categorizations on YouTube so people will find it.

Tip # 4 -- Don't attempt "stealth" fake customer insertions to YouTube.
Some companies try to sneak corporate-sponsored video onto YouTube in a way that makes it seem like it is consumer-generated. The YouTube community is remarkably skilled at ratting out inauthentic video, so this approach is fraught with danger.

Tip #5 – Try a series of similar videos to build interest
Sometimes a series of videos works great. The Blendtec Will it Blend? videos are a perfect example. The even sell t-shirts now!

Tip #6 – Tell everyone about your video!
When upload your first few videos, you are likely to hear a deafening silence. You'll be waiting for comments, but none will come. You'll check your video statistics and be disappointed by the tiny number of viewers. Don’t get discouraged. It takes time to build an audience. Make sure people know it is there and can find it. Create links to your video from your home page, product pages, or online media room. Mention your video in your e-mail or offline newsletters, and create links to your video as part of your e-mail signature and those of other people in your organization.

Tip # 7 – make sure bloggers know about the video
Sending a link to the video to bloggers or commenting on other people's blogs (and including a link to your video) is a good way to build an audience. If you comment on blogs in the same space as yours, you might be surprised at how quickly you will get viewers to your video.

Tip #8 – Experiment a lot to find something that hits
While I think it is difficult to purposely create viral marketing buzz, it is certainly possible. Create a number of campaigns and see what hits, then nurture the winners along. Think like a venture capitalist or movie studio and try a number of things in order to get that elusive hit.

Good luck. And if you do create a cool video, let me know.