Today, the "New GM" emerged from bankruptcy. The re: invention process has been swift.
I was particularly interested to see that GM CEO Fritz Henderson not only did the typical news conference for mainstream media reporters today, he also answered questions for a half hour this afternoon on Twitter with the #fritz hashtag.
I asked this question:
New GM #fritz @gmblogs The brands spend huge amounts of $$ on TV commercials & TV sponsorship. How can you know this approach is effective?
And I was pleased to get this answer in return:
there is a role for such spending, but we also must explore social media and other direct forms
Since then, I've seen progress. Christopher Barger, Director, Global Social Media at GM has engaged with me several times. And now I have my tweet replied to by the CEO of the company. Pretty cool.
Last night at the Radio & TV Correspondents' Dinner in Washington DC, John Hodgman was the keynote speaker.
Imagine following President Obama at the podium?
Hodgman nailed it big time. Watch this video. Now.
John Hodgman, of course, is a World Wide Rave. He appears on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as the show’s Resident Expert. He is also "PC" in the Apple TV ads.
It was really cool that Hodgman was posting photos to Twitter as he was waiting to go on. Now that's nerd. Well done, sir.
I met John Hodgman at his book launch event in Brookline for his book More Information than you Require. At his event, he kindly signed my poster and let me take his photo.
My friends at Wiley, publishers of my last several books, asked me to do something I've never tried: Sign books while I deliver a presentation.
There were 150 people in line to get a copy of my book and we had a tight time window because we did not want to keep people waiting.
Yikes. Talk about multi-tasking!
I was also trying to pay attention to individual people in the audience (about 100 people were out of camera view).
At about the 6:00 point of this short video, you'll see me talking about Dr. Ruth and her new book. Dr. Ruth was in the crowd and she LOVED the tweet I did from the BEA floor Now exploring the Top 10 Secrets to Great Sex.
Here's what I find interesting about this. When you know your material really, really well, you can deliver a performance while doing other things. But this level of multi-tasking is impossible unless you are totally prepared.
The first time I recall being aware of this was when I sat in the front row at a Rolling Stones concert at Fenway Park in Boston in 2005. During Satisfaction, Ronnie Wood was playing right in front of me (see photo) while chatting up the cute girl right next to me: “Hello Love!” Ronnie said. “How are ya?”
Do you know your stuff so well that you can multi-task?
It seems like every week, I'm explaining Twitter to people. You probably are too.
I don't know about you, but I frequently find it challenging to describe Twitter. I was at a dinner party this weekend and there were four people who had (of course) heard of Twitter, but none had used it.
When I showed a few things on my iPhone, they seemed perplexed.
Reactions were something like: "Who cares what I'm doing for lunch?"
Well, that's true!
Unless there is something very special, nobody gives a rat's ass about what you or I are doing!
I think the problem is that damn What are you doing? question posed at the top of the Twitter Web client.
When people have been using Twitter for a few weeks, they usually have a light bulb moment as they realize that Twitter is much more than answering that stupid question in that dumb little box.
Then they begin to really make use of Twitter and gain followers.
Based on how I personally use Twitter, here are a few suggestions for better questions to answer in a tweet:
"How can you be helpful?"
"What's got your attention and why?"
"What's interesting, or funny, of valuable that you can link to?"
Simon Owens points us to a fascinating example of what can "go bad" on Twitter. The instant, always-on aspects of Twitter can make a well-organized "campaign" take off in an unintended direction.
I'm fascinated by online popularity. Why does one YouTube video have 100,000 views and another seemingly similar video only 100 views? I believe that popularity is something that you can help to influence and I wrote about it in World Wide Rave.
But what about extreme popularity?
My friend Chris Brogan has a blog at chrisbrogan.com that's ranked by Technorati as one of the top 100 blogs in the world. He regularly gets 50 or 100 comments on his posts. And @chrisbrogan has 69,000 followers on Twitter as I write this.
WTF? How does one achieve this extreme popularity?
Bottom line is that Chris is helpful and friendly and funny and smart. People like to be around him. And he's prolific.
I'm reminded of High School. Remember those people who could move within any group and be friends with all of them (even the teachers)? That's Chris. I have no doubt that in High School he was tight with guys on the football team, had friends who played Dungeons & Dragons in dank rec rooms, and could sit with the cheerleaders at lunch. And he likely hung out with teachers after class.
And that's true for him online today.
BTW – Chris writes VERY FAST. I sat with him at the MarketingNow conference in Wellington New Zealand a few weeks ago and watched him bang out a blog post in about the time it took me to write a tweet. Get this: Chris has updated twitter over 40,000 times. That’s forty thousand tweets. Yikes. Photo credit @SiobhanBulfin
I asked Chris about extreme popularity and in this video he shares some thoughts.
For a look at a terrific professional athlete fan page, check out the site of Sasha Vujacic, the point guard / shooting guard of the Los Angeles Lakers' triangle offense. Sasha was a member of the Slovenian junior national team and was drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2004 NBA Draft. He's now in the thick of the NBA playoffs.
The Sasha Vujacic site is beautifully designed and contains a huge amount of information about Sasha, including videos, photos, and much more. And get this, there's content in multiple languages (English, Italian, Slovenian, and even Chinese and Japanese) because Sasha has fans from all over the world.
The @SashaVujacic twitter feed updates on the site and there is an RSS feed of "regularly updated insider information and stories that you may publish on your Web site automatically as Sasha publishes them."
The best part of the site is that it gives off a vibe that Sasha is approachable. There are many casual photos of him. There's a tool where fans can ask him questions and can even create their own T-shirt design and send it to Sasha. If he likes the design, he will post it on his official online store.
Vladimir Cuk and his firm Attention Interactive built the site for Sasha. But more importantly, Vlad and his firm developed a terrific strategy for Sasha to interact with his fans and the media.
"The site is a hit with fans and NBA officials alike," Vlad says. Sasha and his management team are amazed at how the site looks and the level of interaction and response from fan community, according to Vlad.
Other players have noticed as well and are intrigued about the possibilities of engaging more intimately with the public via the Web and social media.
When Vlad was pitching for the business, he was up against the traditional public relations firms that frequently work with other NBA players. Sasha and his manager asked very intelligent questions and during the meetings and came away ready to try what to date is non-traditional promotion for a pro basketball player.
Most players use the media to tell their stories and are removed from interacting directly with fans. Not Sasha.
I have several suggestions to improve what is already a great site.
Sasha could update Twitter a bit more and maybe provide a little more about his life. Fans would be interested in the details of a player’s day and Twitter is a perfect way to do this.
The site should have permalinks. The way it is set up now, it is impossible to point to individual pages or photos.
But these nits are minor. Great job Sasha (and Vlad).
Early today I had an opportunity to visit the Wellington headquarters of the New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU), at the invitation of David Barton-Ginger who serves as the online manager. The New Zealand Rugby Union is the governing body of rugby in New Zealand, administering all parts of the game in NZ from grass roots, Air New Zealand Cup, Rebel Sport Super 14 and the All Blacks (the national team).
David has a challenge and he would like your help.
While he has gotten started with social media (see below for details), David is in the middle of a process to convince the managers of NZRU to "lose control" and jump feet first into the swirling waters of social media.
His goals are to inform existing fans from around the world and to bring new fans to the All Blacks who may purchase shirts, caps and other items and may buy tickets to attend games.
David has a big meeting coming up in a few days and he needs to know, from you, why a sports team with fans all over the world should pay close attention to social media.
What in particular should David be doing? Please leave a comment here if you can help.
All Blacks and social media
During the season when the All Blacks are playing, the site gets more than a half million unique visitors per month. Interestingly, 80% of web visitors are from overseas.
David knows that he needs to use social media to reach fans. Several weeks ago he started a Twitter feed @NZRU and an All Blacks Facebook page and he also has a YouTube channel. These are all new initiatives.
David also administers The Direct Line on the All Blacks site. Each month NZRU selects five questions submitted by fans and put them to NZRU CEO Steve Tew to answer via video (which David films). For example, in a recent video Tew gives a brief explanation why players tend to not swap their jerseys on the field after a game anymore.
David has been with the team for five years. Like many people who gravitate to building content-rich Web sites and experimenting with social media, he came to his work by accident. "I was a foreign exchange trader with Westpac and then went to live in London for a few years and worked in banking there too. But I was looking for something more creative. I came back to New Zealand and on a whim attended a Web design course. I really enjoyed it so I started doing some Web project management in the banking industry."
Then the opportunity with the New Zealand Rugby Union came up and David grabbed it. "It was a three-month temporary assignment, but I'm still here after five years," he says.
David says while he is a big All Blacks fan, he tries to put his role first and look at things from a web perspective. He thinks that if he were much more passionate about the team, it would sometimes be more difficult to do his job.
OK, David here’s my idea.
I really think you need to play up the Haka more on the site and in social media. I suggest you consider creating a microsite with photos and video of the All Blacks and the Haka. For many new rugby fans, the Haka is the first thing that separates the All Blacks from other teams.
FYI, in case you don't know, the Haka is a traditional war dance of the Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand. New Zealand's national rugby team, the All Blacks, perform a Haka war chant prior to each match. In the rugby world, the All Blacks performing the Haka is definitely a World Wide Rave. I've seen this at the Hong Kong Rugby Sevens and can confirm that it intimidates the other teams.
Maryann Separovic - @GirlBug - Is traveling all over the world and blogging her experiences. She was at the tweetup and here is her report.
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This morning with a group of 30 people recruited through Twitter, we opened the NASDAQ stock market. It was covered live on FOX Business News, CNBC, and other networks. What a terrific morning.
I really appreciate everyone who took the time to participate with me. What a special morning. Thank you for your enthusiasm.
I’ve already seen dozens of photos that people who were there have posted, but here are several taken by Zef Nikolla, the NASDAQ photographer. (Click for a larger image).
UPDATE March 27, 2009
The guest list is now full. Thanks for your interest.
Follow our updates using hashtag #NASDAQ on Monday.
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You are invited to join me for an unusual tweetup!
I can invite up to 30 people to join me when I am a guest of GlobeNewswire to ring the bell to open the NASDAQ stock market on Monday morning March 30, 2009.
If you want to join me, please email me – david (at) freshspot (dot) com or send me a Twitter DM to @dmscott
I was invited by GlobeNewswire as part of my World Wide Rave book launch. We'll create a rave at the stock exchange with our tweets using hashtag #NASDAQ
This will be a first for NASDAQ and there may be mainstream media there to watch (and perhaps report) what we do.
The morning will go roughly like this. We'll meet around 8:30, pass through security, and go to the television studio at NASDAQ. There will be a few really short speeches, then I will ring the bell. We'll have some photos in the studio and then a photo outside with my World Wide Rave book cover on the NASDAQ Tower in Times Square.
See some sample photos below. I'm told that I’ll have our photos available to post by that afternoon.
All the while we can tweet what's going down.
The entire event will wrap up in less than one hour.
Sound good? Let me know if you want to come. I can get the first 30 to contact me inside. Let me know and I’ll provide the details.
GlobeNewswire, a NASDAQ OMX company, is one of the world's largest newswire distribution networks, specializing in the delivery of corporate press releases, financial disclosures and multimedia content to the media, investment community, individual investors and the general public.
I really appreciate GlobeNewswire offering us this opportunity.
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