Web Ink Now

What the heck is Web 2.0 / social media / social networking and how do these concepts relate to the new rules of marketing & pr?

Recently I've noticed that many people have been using a bunch of definitions, including "New Rules of Marketing", "Web 2.0 marketing", "social media marketing", and "social network marketing" interchangeably. (Feel free to substitute "PR" for "marketing" if that’s appropriate for you.)

I don't think these concepts are the same at all, and I think that using them interchangeably creates problems for all of us.

Here's a summary from my perspective: "social media marketing" and "social network marketing" are two different things. From the marketing & PR perspective, both are subsets of "the new rules of marketing & PR". On the other hand "Web 2.0 marketing" is essentially a meaningless phrase. See below for details of where I'm coming from.

I wanted to spark some dialog about this as I think that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about what some of the various phrases mean. Additionally, the tools and techniques vary.

Please jump in with your thoughts.

Here are mine:

The new rules of marketing (and the new rules of PR).
These phrases were not used prior to me introducing them in 2006. If you Google either phrase today, you'll see that links to my site, blog, and work dominate the top results.

I say that the old rules of marketing & PR were that you either had to buy expensive advertising or beg the media to write about you. Prior to the Web, there weren't other significant ways to get noticed. The Web has changed the rules. The new rules of marketing & PR are that you can bypass the gatekeepers and publish your own content online in the form of content-rich Web sites, blogs, YouTube videos, photos, ebooks and the like and reach buyers directly.

Web 2.0 marketing (and Web 2.0 PR)
The term Web 2.0 is credited to Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly media.
"Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the Internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform."

Many people have taken the "Web 2.0" phrase and slapped "marketing" or "PR" on the end to designate something new. My opinion is that the term Web 2.0 (as coined by O'Reilly) was meant to describe how people use the Web and how software companies are creating applications that are Web-based instead of requiring downloading to your PC or delivered via a client-server environment.

I'd say that people who use the terms "Web 2.0 marketing" and "Web 2.0 PR" (or the related "marketing 2.0" and "PR 2.0") are using those phrases as a catch-all to describe "new" and most can't really define exactly what they mean except to say that "it includes blogs and YouTube and Facebook and other stuff like that."

Personally, I steer clear of using Web 2.0 when describing marketing and PR because it is imprecise and confusing.

Further reading – the Web 2.0 Wikipedia entry.

Social media marketing (and social media PR)
I'd suggest that the term social media describes online media with a participatory or interactive component.

A news story that is delivered online becomes social media if there is a place for readers to comment on the news story. Blogs, forums, Wikis, and chat rooms are all social media in my opinion because they include an interactive component.

Marketing and PR using social media involves creating social media content (starting a blog perhaps) and participating in social media (by leaving appropriate comments other people’s blogs or forums).

Further reading – the Social Media Wikipedia entry.

Social network marketing (and social network PR)
I'd suggest that the term social networking describes online networking tools and the ways they are used to connect groups of people on the Web.

By my definition, social networking sites include Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, SecondLife, Bebo, and others similar to these. People use these sites to network and stay connected with friends and colleagues and to meet other like-minded people.

Marketing and PR using social networking involves creating personal profiles, creating and joining groups, and building applications for others to use. It involves participating in social networking sites.

Further reading – the Social Network Wikipedia entry.

Here's something important.

By my definitions, "social media marketing & PR" as well as "social network marketing & PR" are two different things and both are subsets of the "new rules of marketing & PR."

The way I see the world, as marketing and PR people we need to think about the new rules as including lots of tools and techniques and social media and social networking are two of those. But there are many others.

What are your thoughts?

Show, Don't Tell: the SAP Marketing Community Meeting

Imagine that you are a senior executive at a large enterprise, one with over 2,000 people who work in global marketing. What would you do if you wanted to provide them with ideas about online marketing, social media, viral marketing, and other so-called "Web 2.0 marketing" concepts?

Well, you could bring everyone from far-flung corners of the globe to some hotel ballroom somewhere and talk to them.

That's not what SAP is doing.

On April 8, 9 & 10, SAP is bringing all 2,000 marketers in the company together for a virtual event - SAP Marketing Community Meeting. How cool is it that SAP is using the tools of social media to educate people about social media. "Show, don't tell" in action!

SAP invited external bloggers and speakers (virtual, of course) to help drive knowledge transfer to the SAP Marketing Community.

I am pleased to be a guest blogger at the SAP Marketing Community Meeting together with:

Seth Godin

Ze Frank

Dennis Howlett

Zoli Erdos

Ross Mayfield

David Armano

Laura "Pistachio" Fitton

At this stage, the community is open to SAP marketers only. However, some of the discussions may be shared in the future.

As SAP knows, the best way to understand social media and the new rules of marketing & PR is to jump in. Don't just talk about it. Do it.

Join me for a free live conversation with Seth Godin and Michael Port to discover the one thing that will make or break your marketing

Alert readers of this blog will recall that last month I reviewed Meatball Sundae, Seth Godin's terrific new book.

Good news—I'll be speaking with Seth as part of his virtual book tour and I would like you to participate. All it will cost you is an hour of your time.

On Monday, January 14th, at noon ET, join New York Times bestselling author, Seth Godin, Michael Port (author of Book Yourself Solid) and David Meerman Scott (that would be me) for a panel discussion.

Seth promises that you'll discover the one thing that will make or break your marketing efforts this year. (I can't wait to find out myself…)

Here are some other things we hope to discuss. (But then again we may just take the conversation down some equally interesting other paths.)
> The most important question to ask when choosing a marketing strategy
> How to increase sales and build brand awareness with less effort
> Why My Space, You Tube and viral marketing work for some, but not for others
> How to effectively generate buzz and word-of-mouth referrals

Can't make the live call? Go ahead and register anyway and we'll send you an email with a link to the recording so you can listen to it on your iPod.

It's free to register.

I hope you can make it.

Lights! Camera! Sales! Welcome Wall Street Journal readers

I am quoted in a terrific article in today's Wall Street Journal by Raymund Flandez titled Lights! Camera! Sales! How to use video to expand your business in a YouTube world. The article includes many examples of viral videos and is worth a read. We also filmed a television segment for the Wall Street Journal Report where we discussed how small businesses can create online videos that can increase their exposure on the Internet. Thank you for speaking with me Raymund.

If you've found your way to my blog via The Wall Street Journal, thanks for stopping by. I am an online thought leadership and viral marketing strategist and through my books, seminars and speaking I show organizations how to harness the amazing power of viral marketing.

Here are a few things I've written on this blog about viral marketing using YouTube videos that you might want to check out:

8 tips to make your YouTube video go viral

Viral Marketing with Jerry Garcia's toilet

IBM's terrific "Mainframe: Art of the Sale" sequels now available on YouTube!

Video on the Web to reach your buyers

You may want to check out my bestselling book The New Rules of Marketing & PR. I provide much more information about creating content, including YouTube videos, that people want to consume.

My ideology: marketing and public relations is vastly different on the Web. The old rules of mainstream media are about controlling a message and the only ways to get noticed is to buy expensive advertising or beg the media to write about you. The new rules of marketing and PR (on the Web) are completely different. Instead of buying or begging your way in, anybody can publish their way in using the tools of social media such as YouTube videos and other online media (blogs, podcasts, online news releases, ebooks).

The Brave New Media World – social media for hospitals

This morning I had an opportunity to participate in a terrific event called The Brave New Media World sponsored by the Massachusetts Hospital Association. What I love about social media and marketing is that every time I have a chance to interact with people from a particular industry, I learn something new.

Hospitals have a terrific opportunity to use social media, but are jumping in slowly. People such as Deborah Chiaravalloti, Vice President, Public Relations & Marketing at Anna Jaques Hospital in Newburyport, MA, who I enjoyed speaking with prior to the event, are eager to learn and were paying close attention to the speakers.

First up was Larry Weber, Chairman, The W2 Group and author, Marketing to the Social Web: How Digital Customer Communities Build Your Business published by Wiley the publisher of my book The New Rules of Marketing & PR. The W2 Group, "a next-generation marketing services ecosystem that helps CMOs in their new role as builders of communities" just received a $30 million investment from Monitor Clipper Partners, a Cambridge, MA-based private equity firm affiliated with the global consulting firm Monitor Group. Congratulations Larry. I'll be watching W2 as Larry embarks to "develop the company into the dominant player in the multi-billion dollar next-generation Web 2.0 market."

Here are a few things I captured from Larry.
"In the hospital world the social web is going to be huge."
"Emotion, a huge part of the social web is also part of health care, for example people living with diseases."
"Definition of branding is all about the dialog you have with constituencies. The stronger your dialog, the stronger your brand is."
"We haven’t seen the impact that the blogosphere has yet. It will be must more influential in the future."
"Next time you go to the Boston Public library, be careful because you may step on a homeless PR person."
"Leveraging Social Media in Marketing can help you to do all of these things: Brand building, lead generation, research and development, product or service launch, customer retention, partner & channel communications, thought leadership, internal communications, media relations, and crisis management."
"Every company has a right to build thought leadership and talk about the things that they know very well."
"Definition of Marketing = the influencing of opinion through content."
"Role of traditional media is to drive people to online communities."
"Marketing is a verb, not a noun."
"They should take the $50 billion that they spend on pharmaceutical advertisements and give half to charity and put the rest into social media. Why spend so much on TV, all the ads are the same anyway – it doesn’t matter if it is Viagra or an asthma dug – its good looking people running in a field."

I was thrilled to hear from Paul Levy, President and CEO, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School); Blogger of Running a Hospital. I’ve been following Paul’s blog for some time. How cool is it for the CEO of a well-known hospital to blog.

Here are the interesting things I captured from Paul's discussions (these are paraphrased):

1. This all started as kind of a lark in the summer of 2006 when I read an article in the New York Times that said that only one of the Fortune 500 CEOs had a blog. So I thought this would be fun. Why don't I start a blog and learn about how to do this. So I started to blog. Traffic built slowly until The Boston Globe wrote about it and it took off.

2. I started to post about clinical data we were seeing in the hospital in virtually real time—things like quality and safety. I heard things from other people who run hospitals who questioned what I was doing. We as an academic medical center are high cost part of the medical system. The public has the right to know what they are getting for their money. What better way to make a case that we're adding value to our public, and the government agencies that regulate us. Why not show what we're doing as a public institution?

3. The other thing I found out by accident is that as a management tool in the hospital it is easier to get people to work better, People in hospitals are caring and they want to eradicate disease. For example Ventilator Associate Pneumonia. We created information about the VAP that helped to save more than 90 lives and posted it. This creates better work because we are not afraid to say what we're doing and how we're helping. We put ourselves under the microscope.

4. We are not doing this as a matter of competitive advantage. We don't think they find the hospital by reading the blog. This is an exceptionally useful tool as part of the public debate and to hold our own people accountable.

5. Paul showed us his stat counter page with traffic of about 10,000 per week. "You've got to be a little brave to do this. I don’t put anything on the blog that I wouldn’t say in another way."

Teresa Hanafin, Director of Community Publishing, boston.com (affiliated with The Boston Globe which is oened by The New York Times). Teresa talked about OhmyNews and other citizen journalism sites. All the speakers are Facebook members but only about 20% of the audience is. Teresa is working on ways to take the best parts of Facebook and putting it on Boston.com. There are more than 100,000 discussion topics on Boston.com. Users have updated over 50,000 photos to Boston.com. All companies can make use of people’s creativity. There are hundreds of restaurant reviews. People post videos of high school sporting events. Communities give people ownership and provide people with a way to take the community into different directions – for example, people who met on the wedding boards ended up a few years later starting a parenting board.

I showed several of my favorite examples of hospital viral marketing:
Johns Hopkins Health Newsfeed Podcast – a terrific weekly podcast with Elizabeth Tracey, director of electronic media for Johns Hopkins Medicine, and Rick Lange M.D., chief of clinical cardiology at Johns Hopkins for people who want to become informed participants in their own health care.

Sharp HealthCare's Baby Gallery, a free online photo gallery and birth announcement service for parents, family and friends of babies born at Sharp. What’s cool is when people share their baby photos using the Sharp Baby Gallery, they sell Sharp’s service in the process.

The power of negative headlines (part two)

Mark R. Hinkle (Author, Blogger, Technologist) enjoyed my riff do not read this blog post. So he tried the tactic on his blog on subject he knew would elicit a strong reaction.

Top 10 Reasons Not to Use Ubuntu

Editorial note – even if, like me, you don’t know what Ubuntu is, you must read item number 8 on Mark’s list.

Mark says the reaction was amazing. The next morning he woke to find the post on the front page of Digg with over 100 diggs (there are 149 now). He says his blog is getting 10 times the normal traffic and the hits keep coming.

Mark says an added benefit was that he enjoyed writing the post.

“There's a lesson to be learned about appealing to the emotions of your readers there somewhere,” he says.

A Brand You World Global Summit - free and just a phone call away

Mark your calendars for Thursday November 8, 2007 because A Brand You World 2007 Global Summit is happening. It's totally free and you participate by phone.

In celebration of the 10th anniversary of Tom Peters' thought provoking-article on Personal Branding "The Brand Called You" published in Fast Company, A Brand You World will be the biggest global event of its kind ever on the subject of personal branding. The goal of the organizers is to reach 100,000 people.

During the day, a total of 24 telephone seminars (including mine) will take place.

What a great lineup. I've shared the podium with some of the speakers and participated on podcasts with others. Most I have admired from afar. How cool to be in the company of people like: Jason Alba, William Arruda, Richard Nelson Bolles, Anita Bruzzese, Silvia Cambié, Krishna De, Kirsten Dixson, Stewart Emery, Phil Gerbyshak, T Scott Gross, Thebe Ikalafeng, Nevile Hobson, John Jantsch, Catherine Kaputa, Guy Kawasaki, Andrea Kay, Liz Ryan, Andy Sernovitz, Debbie Weil, Susan Whitcomb, Carol Wilson, and Martin Yate.

Holy cow, the authors of these books are speaking and you can sit in for free: What Color is Your Parachute? (Bolles), The Art of the Start (Kawasaki), Duct Tape Marketing (Jantsch), The Corporate Blogging Book (Weil), Word of Mouth Marketing (Sernovitz), and many others. Here are speaker bios.

Here's how the event works: There will be a full day of teleseminars running period of 12 hours on November 8 starting at 7am Los Angeles, 10am New York, 3pm London, 4pm Paris, and 10pm Hong Kong/Singapore. To participate, all you have to do is register online. The complete details including descriptions of each teleseminar will be posted on the site in the next few days.

Thanks to platinum sponsor Conference Calls Unlimited, the entire event is free (except for the cost of your outbound phone calls). Hey, you can use Skype to make it nearly free for those too.

You should consider participating in the event if you are interested in enhancing your personal brand or if you're looking to advance your career. Just pick a speaker or two and sit in on the call. Or take the day off and listen to a bunch of them.

I will be presenting at 4:00pm eastern time. My topic is "Promoting Brand You with Viral Marketing on the Web." Here’s a description of what I'll present: Everyone has an amazing opportunity to promote Brand You via the Web (for free) but few understand the power available to them. The new spheres of influence include blogs, YouTube, podcasting, chat rooms & forums, direct-to-consumer news releases, social networks, search engines, and much more. Smart people who participate in online conversations become well known and sell themselves as a result.

I'm thrilled that Krishna De, Europe's leading personal branding and marketing strategist, will be interviewing me. Krishna is a key organizer of the Brand You World Global Summit and I thank her for inviting me to participate.

Seinfeld on Marketing - check out this terrific free ebook

Bill Gammell recently released a terrific free ebook Seinfeld on Marketing: 7 Marketing lessons from the cast of "the show about nothing"

Not only is Seinfeld on Marketing a fun read, the lessons are fundamental and applicable to all.

Bill writes: "All this time we thought Seinfeld was a show about 'nothing'. Little did we know that peppered in its nine seasons were hidden, real-world marketing lessons taught from the masters themselves. But unlike the Soup Nazi's secret soup recipes, these marketing lessons are to be shared freely with everyone. In fact (to loosely quote Elaine Benes when she discovered the secret recipes of the short-tempered Soup Nazi), feel free to give these lessons to every marketer in town..."

I agree with Bill, who says: "You don’t even have to be a lover of Seinfeld to understand and apply the marketing concepts. So if you are a newbie, I'll hold your hand and walk you through them. If you wear your 'puffy shirt' on casual Friday's, I'm sure you'll be just fine."

Ebooks, the hip and stylish younger sister to the nerdy white paper are a great way to tell your story.

Check out Seinfeld on Marketing: 7 Marketing lessons from the cast of "the show about nothing"

Check out This Week on IAOC blog

I've participated in several guest blogger gigs at the International Association of Online Communicators (IAOC) and have enjoyed the great participation. You can see an example at Direct to Consumer News Releases: Do they suck?

The Fall 2007 season of This Week on IAOCblog takes place from Oct. 15 - Nov 16, 2007. Each week, an industry expert blogs about a hot topic in online marketing & PR.

I'm happy to see some friends and blogging buddies on the calendar including Dianna Huff, Ted Demopoulos & Shel Horowitz.

The Fall season kicked off September 24 with guest blogger Peter A. Gloor of MIT's Sloan School of Management, who blogged about analyzing workplace communications.

Here's upcoming the lineup:

October 15-19, 2007
 -- Dave Taylor, Blogsmart, Ask Dave Taylor
 -- Is It Okay to Get Paid to Blog?

October 22-26, 2007 
-- Ted Demopoulos, Blogging for Business
 -- Should CEOs Blog?



October 29-November 2, 2007
 -- Dianna Huff, Marcom Writer Blog
 -- Writing Search Engine Friendly Copy



November 5-9, 2007
 -- Lois Kelly, Foghound
 -- Conversational Marketing: Mood over Matter?



November 13-16, 2007 -- Shel Horowitz, Ethical Marketing Expert
 -- Blogger's Code of Ethics: News or Ruse?



Strumpette managing editor Amanda Chapel resigns role as PR industry watchdog

I've been a huge fan of Strumpette "a naked journal of the PR business" and Amanda Chapel, the nom de plume of Strumpette’s managing editor, since the site's beginnings. Strumpette is a site that dares to challenge the status quo, that isn’t scared to tell it like it is, and that takes on the vested interests in the PR business. In doing so, Amanda shows what’s wrong with much of PR as it is practiced today.

Amanda is a terrific writer. Some of her posts are so sharply written that I needed a band-aid after reading. Each post made me think. As I told Amanda, her writing influenced my book The New Rules of Marketing & PR and I was honored to recognize her in the acknowledgments.

In Amanda's retirement announcement, she says: “BUT now I am tired; and now regrettably, I seem to spend all my time revisiting the same battles previously won. I spend all my time trying to keep the Web's rising tide of small literal minds at bay. As you can imagine, it's overwhelmingly tedious and exhausting. All while the largest association of our profession is spending BIG MONEY on a veritable reenactment of 'The Masque of the Red Death'!"

I've traded emails with Amanda's handlers several times and have enjoyed the one-on-ones too. I do hope that Strumpette itself will live on and I look forward to hearing what’s next for those who worked Amanda's magic.