Web Ink Now

The Pentagon Channel merging television and Web-based content

During my visit to The U.S. Department of Defense on Friday, I was lucky to spend some time with Brian Natwick, General Manager of The Pentagon Channel. I visited Brian the studio of this 24-hour television service available to stateside cable and satellite providers, via American Forces Radio and Television Services, overseas and via the Web at pentagonchannel.mil.

The Pentagon Channel is the ultimate form of Brand Journalism. It is an important way that the U.S. Department of Defense communicates with people all over the world. Here is a five-minute video where I ask Brian about what The Pentagon Channel does and the intersection of television and Web content.

Filmed with my Flip HD video camera and edited on iMovie.
Direct link to the video here.

My favorite (lightly edited) quote:

"The goal of social media at The Pentagon Channel is not to regurgitate the news, but to expand and give a total 360-degree view [of the news] from just a simple tweet to generate awareness, to Facebook, to an in-depth blog."

The Pentagon Channel site
The Pentagon Channel on Facebook
The Pentagon Channel on Twitter

:00 – 1:45 A little about how The Pentagon Channel gets the news out (and wins Emmy Awards in the process).

1:45 - 2:10 What The Pentagon Channel means to family members.

2:10 – 3:30 How The Pentagon Channel communicates via the Web and how Social Media allows an expansion of the television news.

3:30 - 5:00 The role of user generated content.

If you haven't seen it yet, check out my video conversation with Roxie Merritt, Director of New Media Operations at the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs in the U.S. Department of Defense.

Another great example of brand journalism coming later in the week. Stay tuned...

Simple and visual blogger code of ethics

I've been talking about blogging and ethics for a while. For example, I wrote a post called What would your mother say? Blogging and ethics back in 2006. (BTW - 2006 was about two decades ago in dog… er, I mean Internet years).

The issue keeps coming up. John Cass recently wrote about a blogger at WebEx who posted a review of a competitor's product. And last week, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission published regulations last week targeting bloggers, and a furious discussion ensued.

My friend Andrew Davis Chief Strategy Officer at at Tipping Point Labs has an elegant solution. He suggests a visual code (see draft 1.0 below). It reminds me of how Creative Commons works which I really like. I'd imagine that the icons would link to web based information just like CC does.

I love it. What do you think??

One suggestion Andrew As an author and someone who occasionally reviews books, I’d like to have a clause saying that works such as movies, music, and books that are frequently sent for review to bloggers be in another category than “payola.” The relationship between the media of all types and those of us who create works like books, CDs, and feature films has always included free review copies. (FYI - I get more than 100 unsolicited review copies of books per year.)

Brand journalism, cool cars, copycat ads, and the future of GM

This has been "GM week" for me. I spent the day at General Motors world headquarters in Detroit on Monday at the invitation of the GM social media communications team. And each day since, I've posted a new video interview that helps tell the story of GM re:invention directly from those involved. (If you have not seen these, do also pay attention to the discussion within the blog comments).

GM CEO Fritz Henderson discusses new marketing

Top GM marketing exec Bob Lutz on effective communication

Christopher Barger on social media communications at GM

Mary Henige of GM on storytelling and humanizing the company

This all happened because I wrote a blog post in June that was critical of General Motors Attention GM: Here are the top 5 marketing ideas for your reinvention. The post received hundreds of tweets and more than 50 comments. But then something remarkable happened. Within mere hours, I was engaged with the social media team at GM. And the candor and human interaction turned me around. I went from a critic to a supporter. Amazing really that a visible critic can become an educated supporter.

I accepted the company's invitation to visit and to learn more about what they are doing. After a week of reflection, I have some observations to share with the marketers and executives at GM.

Humanizing a giant corporation: My biggest takeaway of my GM experience is that the people who work at GM are doing a good job at humanizing the company. The individuals I met are passionate about their work and about the company. They know they have a tough road, but they are invested in the challenge. Watching the videos gives you a good sense of the ways that the company is engaging in a human way. This was an issue I was particularly critical of back in June. However, the company’s television ads are not helping (see below).

Products: While visiting GM, I drove a Yukon Denali Hybrid SUV as well as a zero-emission, hydrogen-powered Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell vehicle. I was also given a tour of the Chevrolet Volt plug-in electric vehicle factory (where they are making early test versions). While the Hydrogen and electric cars are not in the market yet, these new technology vehicles are certainly products that people will want to buy.

Chevrolet VoltAge site: The Volt is not due out for more than a year, but the company knows there is huge interest in a plug-in electric car. The marketing challenge here is to build a broad group of fans for a product that cannot be actually purchased for more than a year. Chevrolet VoltAge is a social network for Volt and electric vehicle enthusiasts to engage with others around the Volt and vehicle electrification issues. This is a great example of brand journalism and a terrific way to keep them interested in the development of a new car through to the time they can buy it.

GM Design Lab blog: I was given a glimpse into the GM design process by Andrew Smith director of advance design at the GM Design Lab. Smith is working on a project for the future called Small Premium. What’s interesting is that GM opened the ideas up for public comment via a blog and videos. Where most early design thinking is “top secret,” in this case the open discussions are refreshing. In another great example of brand journalism at work, Smith explores ideas like, “What is Premium?” and “In what context can Premium be measured?”

Television advertising: I am not a fan of the new May the Best Car Win 60-day money back guarantee television commercial featuring Chairman Ed Whitacre. In my opinion (and the opinion of commenters on this blog and a bunch of tweets I have seen), Whitacre does not come across as a credible spokesperson. I’d like to see Fritz Henderson doing these ads instead.

Ed Whitacre is no Lee Iacocca. But I have a more fundamental issue with the May the Best Car Win television ads. They seem to be a blatant rip-off of the 1980s Chrysler commercials with chairman Lee Iacocca. Watch one and then the other and you'll see what I mean. The parallels are eerily similar. Big American auto company has a near death experience. They run ads featuring the most senior executive walking around the latest model cars talking about quality. Both ads talk about how great their cars are compared to the competition. Really? Is that the best that your Madison Avenue agency can do? Copy a 1980s playbook? And a poor copy at that?

I'd like to thank Fritz, Bob, Christopher, Mary, Chris, Andrew, and the many other people at GM who tool the time to educate me, and in turn you. I’ll be watching, blogging (and hopefully cheering too) as GM continues to make progress.

Top GM marketing exec Bob Lutz on effective communication

When I visited General Motors world headquarters on Monday, a highlight was meeting Bob Lutz, GM vice chairman and the top marketing and communications executive in the company.

Lutz has been writing on the GM FastLane blog since 2004, making him one of the first senior executive bloggers. I filmed my conversation where we discuss how he uses the blog to communicate directly to journalists, how social media and offline marketing has changed in the five years since FastLane blog launched, how online research influences product development and advice to senior executives on communications and it’s importance to business.

The video is 12 minutes. Below are some times if you want to skip to a particular part of the video.

Filmed with my Flip video camera and edited on iMovie.
Direct link to the video here.

My favorite (lightly edited) quote: "Very few CEOs understand that there is nothing more important than communication... The more you engage people by answering emails, getting on blogs, getting on Twitter, and posting stuff on YouTube, the more we make ourselves real and credible and accessible and look like human beings who are trying to a good job rather than a bunch of amorphous corporate types… A CEO who says 'my job is to look at numbers and run this company from the inside' doesn’t fully understand what a CEO’s role is."

:00 – 1:50 On being one of the first executive bloggers back in 2004 and how he used the blog to communicate directly to journalists.

1:50 - 3:00 How social media and offline marketing has changed in the five years since FastLane blog launched.

3:00 - 5:30 On how bloggers and people on Twitter influenced the decision to cancel the Buick plug-in hybrid SUV only a few days after announcing the new vehicle.

5:30 – 7:00 How online research at GM influences product development.

7:00 – 12:00 Bob Lutz provides advice to senior executives on what online marketing and social media and it’s importance to business.

In case you missed it, here is my video interview with Fritz Henderson, CEO of General Motors. We discuss what helps to sell cars, including "new marketing" (blogs, Twitter, online video, etc.) as well as the more traditional television commercials plus the importance of word of mouth.

Watch for additional blog posts Including video interviews with the GM social media team later in the week.

Is it time for companies to hire a Social Media Administrator?

My friend Jim Stewart just posted on the idea of a Social Media Administrator. Jim’s idea is that there is a need for this new role, much like in the late 1980s we developed the need for a System Administrator (Information Technology department people responsible for computer networks) and the 1990s brought Webmasters (responsible for company websites).

I agree and I’d like to expand on Jim's post

I see the Social Media Administrator not as someone who develops content and participates in discussions on social media (although they could certainly have a business related personal blog or twitter stream).

This is not the senior leadership role for social media in an organization but rather the coordination point for company activities. The role would be someone who manages and provides consistency with an organization’s social media presence. Of course, to be done well, the skill set of a Social Media Administrator would need to include deep knowledge of tools like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and blogs.

In my travels, I meet many company executives who struggle with how to implement social media. I think that the consistency and leadership provided by the person in this role could help to reduce the fear that many people have of social media.

First cut at a Social Media Administrator job description

1. Be fully knowledgeable on the tools, techniques and philosophies of social media.

2. Maintain an accounting and provide consistency for company accounts on social media sites. This does not necessarily include personal accounts on sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. However it does include corporate accounts on these sites. Ensure consistency in branding, update frequency, and permissions on these sites. Look for abandoned accounts and remove.

3. Watch for rogue sites springing up using company branding.

4. Analyze and provide advice on social media analysis and monitoring tools (services such as dna13 and Dow Jones Insight that organizations use to monitor social media). Work with those charged with monitoring to implement the tool(s) chosen.

5. Work with others to publish and distribute a set of social media guidelines for personal accounts on social media sites. While the Social Media Administrator may not actually write the document, the person should maintain it and ensure wide distribution. Examples of social media guidelines are IBM Social Computing Guidelines and New Media and the Air Force.

6. Maintain a list of work related personal blogs of employees and make it available to the public on the company Web site. IBM does this really well.

(There are probably many things I am missing here...)

Where does the Social Media Administrator report?

This is a tough one. I think it depends on the company. At IBM and the US Air Force, the social media guidelines were created and are maintained in the communications (public affairs) departments. There’s an argument that says this should be an IT role, but I think it best fits in the Public Relations or Marketing areas. No matter where it sits, the supervisor of the Social Media Administrator should have an understanding of social media.

What do you think?

Image: Piotr Marcinski / Shutterstock

Adrian Neylan and memorable encounters in a Sydney taxi

I’ve been a fan of Adrian Neylan’s "cab blog" for the past four years and I even included it as an example in my book The New Rules of Marketing & PR.

Adrian works the late shift, driving a cab in Sydney, Australia from 5:00 PM to 3:00 AM. After most shifts, Adrian writes a story about a memorable encounter with a passenger and posts it on his blog.

Adrian is a fantastic writer. His stories are funny and interesting, and can sometimes be moving. I find myself laughing out loud or thinking throughout the day (or sometimes both).

So it was with great excitement that I finally had a chance to meet Adrian while in Sydney this week. I hired him at the start of his shift to take me on a personal tour of South Head and Watson’s Bay. Truth be told, he could have taken me anywhere because I just wanted to meet him and see what it is like to be in his cab. After reading so many of his stories, I felt the cab to be a strangely familiar place.

You can read any of Adrian's stories to get an idea of his style, but here are a few opening snippets from recent posts.

Fridays: "Most drivers consider Friday night the best shift of the week. I absolutely loathe it. If it’s not the endless peak hour traffic and it’s frenetic ratbag drivers, it’s the difficult office jerks who lose any semblance of courtesy after a few drinks."

Old mates: "Working predominately at night I rarely encounter the generation from war time Australia. So it’s always a surprise and an honour whenever one of these old diggers climbs aboard and puts some perspective on the hustle and bustle of life."

Luck: "Like most jobs taxi driving has its moments of luck, usually the result of preparation and perserverance rather than simply slacking around."

Or if you want to get a bit racy, you can also read about sexting.

Adrian told me that he has enjoyed storytelling since he was in school. Six years ago, he realized that he can publish through a blog and get an instant readership. He describes his cab as a "content rich environment" with a "story every night."

In this video, I asked Adrian about how he creates the stories.

A few thoughts:

1) All of us can learn from the way that Adrian puts stories together. I certainly have. If you’re struggling with what to write about in your own blog, read Adrian for inspiration.

2) If you find yourself in Sydney and need a cab at night, contact Adrian!

3) Attention book publishers: Adrian has over 1,000 stories on his blog. The best ones would make a fantastic book.

(Note that Adrian goes on holiday for the first two weeks of September, 2009 so no new taxi stories – what am I gonna do every morning? for the next 14 days)

About YOU

I'm amazed when someone writes a terrific blog or has a great Twitter feed (or a presence on some other social networking site) but fails to say who they are. Don't they want to stand out from the crowd?

Your blog's "about" page, your Twitter bio and the other places you interact online are a great opportunity to say who you are! It is an essential element of personal branding. Don’t ignore the opportunity to tell the world about you.

What does your blogs About page say?

If you are taking the time to blog, you need to have a great About page that includes your photo, biography, affiliations, and information about your blog. Often when people visit a blog for the first time, they want to know about the blogger, so it is important to provide background.

This is very important for corporate blogs where you should tell readers who you are personally as well as your affiliation with your employer.

Here's what I do

I actually have several pages I point people to from the top left navigation of this blog.
Disclosure, comment, review, pitch, and use policies
About David Meerman Scott
About Web Ink Now

Note that I have chosen not to use the standard About page that comes with TypePad, the blog software that I use. Instead, I have created a few pages on my blog for information about it and my policies. And I point to a bio on my site.

Many blog software About page templates are terrible. I particularly hate the way Blogger does it. I have never seen a blog created in Blogger that has managed to navigate the template of the Blogger About template.

If you have a blog using Blogger and you've figured out how to make a professional looking about page, please comment here. Although I do not blog in Blogger, I do have a profile (which sucks big time). I have a profile because use it to leave comments. More information on comments are here.

What does your Twitter bio say?

You only get 160 characters. As a component of personal branding, this is a critical section. Don't leave it blank. And don't make a mini-resume from a laundry list of attributes like: "father, brother, surfer, economics major, world traveler, marketer, and rockstar wannabe." (That would be my list) I see this sort of thing all the time and it is not good for personal branding.

Try to be descriptive. And try to be specific. My Twitter bio is Marketing speaker and bestselling author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR and the new book World Wide Rave

Make it easy for people to contact you

Encourage people to contact you, make it easy for them to reach you online, and be sure to follow up personally on your fan mail.

You'll get a bunch of inquiries, questions, praise, and an occasional detractor if you make it easy for people to contact you. Because of the huge problem with spam, many people don’t want to publish email addresses. But the biggest problem is with automated robots that harvest email addresses, so to thwart them, write your email address so humans can read it but the machines cannot. For example, I list my email address as david (at) DavidMeermanScott (dot) com.

What about you? How have you told the world about you on your blog or social networking sites?

Image: Vibrant Image Studio / Shutterstock

Personal brands vs. corporate brands: Who are the real superstars?

It's always interesting to see when superstars emerge out of existing brands. And it is fascinating to watch when they choose to leave for something new.

Robert Scoble emerging out of Microsoft is a good example. Robert was the first person to put a human face on Microsoft (other than Bill Gates). As a result of Robert's blog and videos, we were able to get insight into Microsoft that was impossible before.

But how much of the "fame" is the brilliance of individual? And how much is based on the existing brand equity of the company they work for? I was thinking of this question while reading the comments in my post from last week Colin Warwick shows how a B2B company makes the first page on Google. Colin has done a great job of personal branding with his signal integrity blog.

Of course, this is a question that’s impossible to answer with certainty. But we can look at it from a few angles.

Robert Scoble became famous as "the Microsoft blogger." But he remains popular today, several years after leaving Microsoft, because he is still at it – creating content online that people are eager to consume. Robert remains popular because of his blog, Twitter feed, videos, and appearances.

What about the Wall Street firms and the superstar traders who work there? If you are a trader at Solomon Brothers or Morgan Stanley and you're trading a book worth a billion dollars of your firm's capital and all of your trades are backed by your famous firm's reputation in the market, are you worth ten million a year in compensation? And consider this: Can that very same trader make ten million a year on their own or at a much less famous firm?

Last week, superstar analyst Jeremiah Owyang announced that he will leave Forrester Research. Several months ago Charlene Li, co-author of Groundswell, and also a superstar left Forrester too.

Here are a few posts for more information on Jeremiah's departure:

Marshall Kirkpatrick Why Jeremiah Owyang is leaving Forrester Research

Jay Deragon Why do they leave Forrester?

So I wonder this: How much of Charlene's and Jeremiah’s online fame is a result of their personal efforts via blogs, twitter and the like? And how much because of the Forrester name and the cachet that brings?

Charlene is building the next phase of her career as an independent and she's blogging, speaking and writing a new book (which sounds interesting – read about it on her blog). She seems to be making the transition just like Robert did. (Jeremiah has yet to announce his next career move. But I suspect that he'll make the transition successfully like Robert and Charlene.)

Lots of Forrester analysts (and those form other firms like Gartner) have reached celebrity status and then left over the years. But many of them find it is tough going when they do not have the famous firm behind them.

Can you still book keynote speaking gigs with "former" in front of the analyst firm in your bio? Will you still get published? Will people still love you?

And what happens to the firm when the stars leave?

Quick quiz: Name a Microsoft blogger.

Star image: Elaine Barker / Shutterstock

Colin Warwick shows how a B2B company makes the first page on Google

Colin Warwick, Signal Integrity Product Manager in the EDA Design & Simulation Software division of Agilent Technologies, is responsible for marketing software to help engineers overcome limitations in high speed digital connections.

As he was working on his marketing plans, he came to the realization that traditional business-to-business marketing like tradeshows are expensive and increasingly ineffective. He also understands the importance of the search engines for his business.

"Everyone understands Google," Colin says. "Everybody can instantly see when you enter a phrase into Google if your competitors come up and you don’t or vice versa."

The most important search term for Colin's products is signal integrity, and Agilent product information was coming up on the fifth page of results, clearly not ideal. So Colin set out to make Agilent appear at the top of the search results.

But unlike many organizations that use SEO techniques to try to creep up a few spaces in the results, Colin started writing a signal integrity blog.

Everything from the name of the blog and the URL to the excellent content was designed to appeal to the buyer personas interested in this topic and to drive solid search engine rankings.

"There are only 50,000 signal integrity engineers in the entire world and our average sale is about $10,000 with a six-month sales cycle," Colin says. "While the competitors show their brochures, we have a valuable blog. It helps a great deal to have such valuable information, both for search engine results and in the selling process."

Colin says that executives at Agilent were very supportive of him starting the blog, but there were some guidelines that he had to work within. "The company said I could blog but that the IT department would not support it," he says. "So I needed to create the blog outside of the company domain. I was required to follow some very common sense rules: Don't mention the competition; link to the Agilent terms of service and privacy policy; and include a copyright notice. It has been a very good experience. Companies need to trust that employees will do the right thing and let people blog."

The results have been very encouraging. "Many customers say that they like the blog and our salespeople tell prospects about it," Colin says. "Having a blog allows me to be spontaneous. For example, I can put diagrams up very quickly and let people know valuable information. If we needed to put content on the corporate site, it would take 3 days. With the blog I can get into a conversation in just five minutes."

So what about the Google search results? On Google, for the phrase signal integrity Colin’s blog is now on the first page of results (number five position when I checked).

"Prior to starting my blog, the company products page was ranked number 44 on Google," Colin says. "That’s a huge improvement."

But there are many added benefits to having a blog that took Colin by surprise.

"Trade magazine journalists read the blog and they include links to it in their blog rolls and I am making great web connections," he says. "For example, I asked Paul Rako, an important journalist at EDN, to moderate a panel for me and he did because he knows me from the blog."

If you blog, make it easy for people to comment

I read dozens of blogs regularly and scan hundreds of others in an average week. Maybe you do too.

A big part of what I like about blogs are the comments. (I especially like the comments on this blog! Thank you.)

Of course, if you blog, the choice of permitting comments is yours to make. Some people choose not to.

However, I've noticed recently that many bloggers who allow comments are discouraging them and they probably don’t even know it. Mainly this is because the blog is set up to only accept comments from people who have an account with the particular blog software that they use.

This is silly. Don’t do it.

For example, if you use Wordpress for your blog and only allow people who have a Wordpress account to leave a comment, then you are eliminating the comments from more than 99 percent of your audience because they do not have a Wordpress account.

Here is the Wordpress comment panel. If you use Wordpress, in this panel you want to leave unchecked the button that says: "Users must be registered and logged in to comment."

I see this mistake made most frequently on the Blogger platform. I’ve gotten so frustrated by blogs built on the Blogger platform requiring that I sign in to my Blogger account that I actually registered for a Blogger account (even though I do not blog on this platform) just to be able to leave comments. But I am a rare person who will do this. Almost nobody else will go through the hassle.

Do you want comments? Then make it easy for people to leave them.

The answer is to flip the switch in your blog software that allows comments in multiple ways. People should be able to comment with just a name.

If you are worried about inappropriate (spammy) comments, use a Captcha program on your blog like I do. This eliminates comments made by machines by requiring humans to enter a "secret word". Or you can flip on the moderation mode and approve comments one by one.

Photo: Kraska/Shutterstock