Greg Verdino

Tomorrow is gone too: social media RIP

Friend, look-alike, PR man and Now Is Gone author Geoff Livingston is stirring the pot today, with a pretty provocative proclamation -- "social media is dead."

Tucked away in a post about why the next Blog Potomac conference -- slated for October 2009 and featuring fellow crayonista Jane Quigley -- will be the last, lies Geoff's eulogy for a form of media and marketing that many still consider the latest shiny object in the marketing practitioner's box of baubles.

The technology adoption cycle has been maturing for social media (and social media, web 2.0 whatever you want to call it is definitely inspired by technology) for some time. Widespread corporate adoption is happening as we speak, albeit with many stumbles. Based on conversations I’m having, even the most conservative organizations are adapting now.

The time when social media as a special or unique or “shiny and new” type of communication is rapidly ending. Does that mean it’s going away? Hardly.

But from an innovators standpoint, as someone who lives on the edge, who wants to be where new frontiers are being created, we’re at the end. For me, social media is dead… That means it’s future forward.

While my experience with conservative organizations leads me to suspect that Geoff thinks we're further along the Technology Adoption Lifecycle (or more precisely the "marketing adoption cycle" - I don't think we can debate that the technology itself is mainstream) than we really are, I'm not sure that Geoff is wrong.  At least not entirely.

If we're talking about social media as a category, as something special, unique or new, then it probably is (or should be, anyway) dead or dying.  The notion of social media as a silo and as something that warrants specialized expertise is nothing more than a point of inflection between a new media landscape that is entirely, seamlessly social and an old media landscape that was always social anyway (even if we didn't know it.)

Then again, I'm not sure the death of social media matters a whole lot to anyone but the "next new thing" innovation junkies.  Is Geoff arguing in favor of shiny object syndrome at a time when, frankly, most marketers are still not making the best use of the last big thing?  Hey, I'm an innovator too (or at least, I like to think I am) and I'm also keen to identify and understand whatever lies around the next bend, but I also know that tomorrow's toys don't amount to a hill of beans to an in-the-trenches marketer who is (let's be honest) at best dabbling in social and still thinks they've had a coup if they convince their agency creative director to display the corporate URL at the end of the new 30-second spot.

So on the one hand we have a small band of serial innovators already seeking out greener pastures.  On the other, we have the rest of the herd who are just beginning to suspect that the ground might be shifting right beneath their hooves.

So whether social media is dead or not, it surely seems to be trapped in limbo.

What are your thoughts?  Is social media dead or is Livingston burying it alive?

If Twitter were a state, it would be Arkansas

No offense to Arkansas.

I've only been there once, for just one day, so I could be way off base here.  But bear with me for a few moments. 

I was traveling with Jaffe and we flew into a quirky, sleepy, little airport early in the morning.  As we hit the road by car, headed to our meeting, Arkansas seemed to comprise little more than open fields dotted with a handful of cows hanging around doing a whole lot of nothing, and the occasional seemingly-deserted house. Now, anyone with even a passing knowledge of business and geography knows that Arkansas is also home to at least one vibrant and vital hub of activity, a place that is chock-a-block with conversation and commerce, a place that is a can't-survive-without destination for thousands of business people and millions upon millions of consumers. But neither hustle nor bustle were among my first impressions of the state.

Jaffe and I spent most of the day sitting in a coffee shop, waiting for something to happen.  When our meeting finally happened, it was a bit of a let-down, fraught with mixed messages and crossed signals, and then aircraft technical issues grounded us in Arkansas overnight. 

On the flipside, Jaffe did manage to convert a stranger into a fan, or more precisely a follower who hung around with us both at the airport and later that evening in the hotel bar, where rather than engage in any kind of meaningful conversation we half-watched American Idol while blurting out a real-time stream of running commentary.

In one random moment of surprise and delight (and social media serendipity), we bumped into blogger, Twitteratum and IBMer Doug Meacham, who just so happened to be in the same place at the same time.  It was a nice few moments of interaction with a social media friend that I only rarely see in person.

If you happen to live in Arkansas, you might protest that -- on the basis of a one day visit -- I've gotten it all wrong.  I missed the point, have no idea what I'm talking about, and that only a true resident can know the state the way the state was meant to be known.  You'd probably be right but it doesn't change the fact that my experience of Arkansas was my experience of Arkansas.

Back in New York when anyone asked, "So what was Arkansas like?" I might recount a rendition of the story above.  Or I might just say something like, "Well, are you on Twitter yet?  It was kinda like that."

For new or infrequent readers who don't know that my tongue is generally planted at least somewhat firmly in-cheek, I should also point out that the mockingbird is Arkansas's state bird.  Which, by way of the clunkiest segue possible, brings me from the great state of Arkansas to the great state of the Twittersphere...

Today, HubSpot released its second State of the Twittersphere report.  Some of the key findings are (un)surprisingly similar to other recent data from ratings giant Nielsen -- that while the service's top-line rate of growth has been through the roof, more than half of all Twitter accounts show little to no sign of activity.  No Tweets. No followers. No friends. 

A deeper dive into the data seems to suggest that the typical Twitter user looks more like my cousin Joe (no relation to Jaffe) and less like me. 

Joe's profile shows no bio, no location, the generic o_O avatar and a single exploratory tweet from more than a month ago.  He has fewer than 10 followers and is following just 23 other accounts.  Look at the accounts he follows and you'll find mostly celebrities and mainstream media outlets, with a few social media micro-celebs and a spammer thrown in for good measure.

At best, you might argue that Joe sees Twitter as a passive experience -- he "tunes in" a handful of brand name channels and watches the content they post.  You might call this the Oprah Effect and this patttern seems to back-up a recent POV from Brian Solis that, for the majority of users, Twitter is a broadcast platform rather than the conversation we social media insiders make it out to be.  And let's face facts people -- with more than a million followers but only a handful of celeb follows and no @ replies since April (none to regular people), Oprah hasn't exactly "joined the conversation."  To the contrary, she has launched yet another broadcast program - although with just 50 or so tweets since joining the service almost two months ago, it isn't a broadcast worth tuning into.  (Love him, hate him or write him off as having hit his peak with That 70's Show, at least Ashton Kutcher seems to get it closer to right - but I digress...)

There's a more likely scenario though, isn't there? 

You can see it in my cousin's profile, but you might infer it from the HubSpot and Nielsen data as well.  That Joe simply visited once, just for one day, and hasn't been back since. (Holy crap, did Verdino just tie together the loose ends of this rambling post?)

This is more an observation than a judgment, since after all, I'm not a big proponent of the bigger-is-better thinking that gets so many marketers hot and bothered.  Maybe my cousin Joe is a living embodiment of the state of Twitter (an argument that would please the naysayers and skeptics) or maybe the true state of Twitter is best understood by taking a long, hard look at the most active users that live in its epicenter -- and we don't care how it looks to outsiders who don't get it (an argument that plays right into the hands of the social media "experts" but is perhaps closer to right.)

In other words - maybe microblogging is meant to be, erm, micro after all. 

And in the end, the value doesn't come from the millions and millions of strangers who may or may not actually be there, but from the dozens or hundreds or thousands of friends that we choose to interact with every day.

Thoughts?

NOTICE (6/16: 9pm EST)  For some reason, comments aren't displaying for this post anymore.  It seems like Typepad is still logging them and hopefully they can help me figure out how to fix the problem. Don't let that keep you from adding your own thoughts though, and try checking back soon to read the thread.

Book 'em Verdino: announcing microMARKETING

I'm excited to announce that I've inked a deal with McGraw-Hill for the publication of my first business book, microMARKETING: A Breakthrough Approach to Building Brands by Thinking and Acting Small.

If the title alone isn't enough to clue you in, I'd like to give you an idea of the ground I'll cover in the book.  Here's a bit of how I described the book in the proposal itself:

A media revolution is underway, fueled by a micro-content phenomenon that is shifting the balance of power from mass communications to masses of communicators.  This shift plays out daily on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Ustream and other social sites.  It’s in the notion that an otherwise normal individual can use social media and low-end technology to become a micro-celebrity with a significant following.  It’s in the viral effect that takes hold when even one online influencer (in essence a one-person media outlet) sparks a conversation that makes or breaks a brand.  It’s in the shift in behavior that is turning the smart phone into the “first screen” for Gen Y and many increasingly-mobile Gen Xers.  It’s in the shift from watching 60 minute television shows interrupted by 30-second advertisements, to watching 30-second pieces of online video content with no advertisements at all.  It’s even in the changing of our expectations of product design and retail sales, giving rise to dozens of successful small businesses and individuals (think Threadless, think Etsy, think Mimobot, think Lemonade) that can create and sell enough high quality, unique or custom merchandise at a premium to shoppers for whom choice and individuality matter more than convenience and price. 

These are exciting times, but they can also be scary times for marketers who have been trained to think that bigger is better, and for whom the excesses and successes of the past 50 or so years – big budgets for major media ad campaigns designed to sell mountains of product through big-box retailers – seem to be the only way to build a big brand.  For better or worse, the new reality is that the old way doesn’t work so well anymore. Simply put, micro-content and macro-marketing don’t mix – and trying to maintain the status quo while consumer behaviors and expectations change amounts to little more than a recipe for failure.

Enter micromarketing – a new approach to building brands, marketing products and services, and growing meaningful long-term customer (and corporate) value.  Micromarketing emphasizes relationships over reach, interactions over interruption, and the network effect over the broadcast network.  It is built upon the premise that the “next big thing” is really lots and lots of small things, and that to survive and thrive, even the biggest marketers must think and act small (make that “micro”), too. 

microMARKETING is not a "Twitter book."  Puh-leeze... In signature Verdino-style, I will aim to help marketers understand the larger trends that are driving the popularity of tools like Twitter and what the real world implications are for businesses (even if Twitter itself -- or Facebook or YouTube, for that matter -- goes away), but my focus will be aimed squarely at the big picture.  I also don't plan to trot out the same ol' tired social media case studies.  In fact, one key piece of my approach is to help large companies understand how to thrive in the era of micro-content and micro-culture by taking lessons from the people and organizations that are involved in the revolution at the grassroots level.  In other words, I'll be looking at what the biggest of big corporations should learn from "whatever experts." 

Again, from the proposal:

Over the past several years, social media has evolved from a trend to watch to an irrefutable fact of life for marketers of all sizes.  Now – before most companies have even gotten social media right – the mainstreaming of micro-content services, the ubiquity of powerful low-cost handheld technology (from Internet-ready phones to consumer-grade HD cameras) and the rise of DIY culture promise to change the rules of consumer engagement yet again.  It is important to understand how these changes impact our ability to build brands, manage customer relationships and drive sales today, and this will only become more important over the coming years as more and more consumers flock to the technologies that are powering the shift.

On the flipside, it is also important that marketers not get swept up in the hype surrounding a single tool or tactic, losing sight of the bigger implications for their businesses.  As has happened with core social media tools like blogging, podcasting and social networking (and short-lived fads like Second Life), marketers now run the risk of not seeing the forest for the trees – of jumping on the “Twitter bandwagon” with short-lived, ill-advised tactics that do little to impact their businesses.   

On the one hand, microMARKETING educates decision makers about larger trends and what they mean for companies who are looking to more effectively engage consumers through new digital channels.  On the other hand, it delivers tangible and practical case studies, stories, tips and tricks from familiar competitors (other large corporations) and unlikely sources of inspiration (micro-businesses and individual creators.)

microMARKETING is slated for a May/June 2010 release.  I need to hand in the final manuscript by mid-October.  Needless to say, I've got my work cut out for me over the next few months.

That may mean less blogging for the next few months, although I'll still try to post here at least once/week.  And you should stay tuned for periodic updates on the book, my progress and the process.  Hell, I may even ask you for some input along the way.

Finally, I'd like to thank the good folks at McGraw-Hill -- especially Donya Dickerson -- and my agent Ethan Friedman at LevelFive Media.

Good times, ahead...

Storytelling at the brink of the future?

Although the odds are pretty good you'll never read a fiction review on this blog, I can't help but tell y'all about J.C. Hutchins' forthcoming novel Personal Effects: Dark Art.  It's a supernatural thriller that pits an art therapist at a psychiatric institute against a blind serial killer/patient -- it may or may not be your cup of tea, and the actual content of the book isn't why I'm telling you about it.

The thing that probably will interest you is the way (ways plural, really) J.C. has taken what he has learned through years of social media self-publishing to create a work that goes well beyond the printed page, encompassing digital, mobile and the physical world to create a fully participatory multimedia narrative.  In many ways, Personal Effects is a novel custom-designed for digital natives (although J.C. and his publisher may not think of it that way) and it just might offer a glimpse at the future of storytelling.

 And the future of storytelling should matter to you no matter what products your company produces or promotes because, as marketers, our success often rides on both our ability to tell compelling stories and our customers' willingness and ability to spread their own stories about their experiences with our brands.

 Of course, everything begins with the book itself.  Let's assume it's good -- I haven't read it yet, but look forward to digging into the advance copy I received over the weekend (thanks J.C.)

But Personal Effects really gets interesting when it gets innovative.  If you aren't familiar with J.C. Hutchins (frankly, I only knew of him through some mutual contacts and from hearing his name bandied about in social media circles), he is a good example of what I have called a "whatever expert" -- someone who is good at what he does and has found a way to succeed at it through smart, effective use of social media.  Although Personal Effects is his first published novel, he has been writing for years, releasing his work as free audiobooks and using the web and social media to build a loyal audience.

J.C. isn't a marketer by training or trade, but the digital and multimedia components of his project offer a practical blueprint for any marketer looking to transform their brand storytelling into an active, participatory experience that is fueled by community and optimized for customer-to-consumer word of mouth.  Readers can enter the world of Personal Effects in a variety of ways:

• Technology-Fueled Calls-to-Action: Clues peppered throughout the novel and in the killer's personal effects packaged with the novel (e.g., a drivers license, photos, hospital paperwork) drive readers to companion websites, forums, onto email lists, into mobile phone voicemail systems and opt-in text messaging programs and more where they can find and explore additional layers of narrative.

• A Distributed, Online Experience: Readers can get inside the heads of key characters through their social network profiles, personal blogs and Twitter streams.

• Original, Distributable Content: Tapping into his heritage as a popular and well-established podcaster, J.C. has produced an exclusive audio-only novella prequel, as well as a series of YouTube-friendly video promos featuring well known horror personalities.

• Seamless Integration with Relevant Third Party Sites: One of the characters (yes, a fictional character from the book) has written columns for Suicide Girls, a site (some content NSFW) whose readership seems to be well aligned with J.C.'s audience, and there is a planned deep integration that brings Suicide Girl models into the novel's fictional world and provides readers with an additional web-only subplot.

• A Fan Community: Readers can 'commit themselves to the Brink' (aka Brinkvale Psychiatric, where the novel takes place), submit their own artwork for display in the community gallery (a logical tie-in with the fact that the book's protagonist is an art therapist at the Brink) and receive personalized intake paperwork.  In other words, readers don't just consume the story; they become part of it.

• Creative, Innovative Influencer Outreach: This is how I became aware of the book in the first place and may bear some of the most relevant lessons for social media marketers.  Over the weekend, the mailman delivered an unexpected package, a good-sized box that contained materials that immediately piqued my interest, earned my attention and (true to the spirit of Personal Effects) drew me directly into the fictional world of Brinkvale Psychiatric.  Containing not only a reviewer's copy of the book and the obligatory media kit, the package was filled with my personal effects from my own stay at the Brink.  Everything was hyper-personalized and it was impossible not to dive in (and just as impossible not to tell others about it -- and last time I checked, that's what influencer outreach is all about.)  Here are a couple of photos and you can check out more on Flickr -- but be warned, you're bound to dismiss your run-of-the-mill blogger outreach emails as downright asinine...

 

 

So what's the bottom line?  J.C. is tapping into the power of digital and the potential of social to turn the lay-back (and some might say dying) act of reading a novel into a fully immersive lean-forward experience.  It's equal parts fiction and alternate reality game, powered by a healthy dose of practical Web 2.0 know-how. Followers of pop culture may draw parallels between Personal Effects and the similarly rich multimedia storytelling approaches used to fuel films like Blair Witch Project, television shows like Lost, video games like Halo 2 and even a recent album release by Nine Inch Nails.  Brands have occassionally tapped into this form of multimedia storytelling to do cool and interesting things -- see Audi's Art of the Heist, for example.  But to my knowledge, this is the first time an author has undertaken something so ambitious in association with a novel -- and it just might get digital natives to pick up a plain old printed book. 

Am I gushing?  Sorry.  It's pretty cool and makes me want to curl up with Personal Effects, my laptop and my iPhone right now.

Barring that though (damn you, workload, damn you), I'd love to hear from you.  Which of J.C.'s approaches do you think you can apply to get your customers involved in your brand's story?

The problem with paid media isn't the "paid"

This morning I searched Google for blog posts about two seemingly related phrases. 

The first search -- for "earned media" -- delivered nearly 7,000 results and every link on the first page pointed to a marketing blogger writing about the concept of unpaid media mentions, impressions or coverage (with media, in this case, including consumer generated content on social sites and elsewhere.)  Every one of the top 10 results represents a blog post written within the past 30 days, including an Ad Age Digital Next article citing a speech by the well-respected NYC venture capitalist Fred Wilson in which he advises marketers to focus more on earned media than on paid media.  Sage advice, kinda...

My second search -- for the similar phrase "earned attention" -- delivered fewer than 500 results and displayed not a single marketing blog post within the first page of links.  Digging deeper, I did find a post by Max Kalehoff in which he wrote of the central role of "earned attention" in the integrated marketing mix.  He published this particular post in 2007.

"Earned media" even has its own Wikipedia entry.  Alas, "earned attention" doesn't.

Earned media isn't a new concept, of course.  If you need a definition, it refers to any effort by which a marketer gains unpaid publicity through either mainstream outlets like television, radio or print, digital outlets like traditional web publishers, or social media outlets like blogs, communities, forums or podcasts.  These media mentions might be earned through PR or just by doing something that garners positive word-of-mouth -- but the distinguishing characteristic is that your brand appears in the media without your company writing a check to media sellers.  This stands in marked contrast to paid media marketing approaches like advertising, sponsorships and product placements.

Much of the current conversation (7,000 blog posts and one high profile speech by Fred Wilson) ponders whether the rises in social media and consumer-to-consumer influence, along with the corresponding faltering of mass advertising's effectiveness, have ushered in an age where earned media reigns supreme over paid media.

This is a fair question and one worth considering, but it also misses the mark by a mile.  Why?  Because whether you earn your media or buy it, the very concept of media (as we use it in marketing, at least) puts corporations -- rather than consumers -- at the center of the value equation.  Really, the only meaningful distinction between paid media and earned media is whether or not the marketer (or it's agency) is writing a check for the privilege of bleating its message out.  They are different ways of saying what you want to say, but they are both still ways of saying -- when what you really want is to be heard.  You don't just want to get in front of people; you actually want to get their attention.

Soooooo... marketers really need to focus not on earned media but on "earned attention." 

Although it may seem like it, I am not arguing about semantics.  Media conveys -- it delivers impressions, reach and share of voice.  If you said that media (paid, earned or otherwise) provides the means of garnering attention, I probably wouldn't argue (assuming your definition of media was broad enough to include consumer generated content.)  But even a means of gaining attention doesn't guarantee you've actually got someone's attention.

The brutal fact is that, whether your company's message found its way into media by purchase or by persuasion, it has never been easier for consumers to get the content they want without really paying attention to the corporate messages they don't.  We all TiVo past 30-second spots, flip by print ads without a glance and contract an acute case of banner blindness whenever we surf the web.  We also casually skim news stories, picking out the highlights without digesting the details -- or glaze over when the hosts of Good Morning America prattle on about some uninteresting topic or another.  In all of these instances, the media themselves (never mind the companies who have paid or earned their way into those media) have flat-out failed to earn our attention.

Attention is a scarce resource.  Far scarcer these days than media inventory or marketing budgets.  And with scarcity comes value.  Speaking as a consumer (because, of course, we are all consumers before we're marketers): if you want my attention -- even a teeny tiny slice of it, even only for a few moments -- you have got to earn it.  Period.

Does the fact that you have enough money to name a stadium or advertise during prime time get my attention?  If I'm Adweek, yes.  If I'm Joe America, probably not.  Does the fact that your PR person worked hard to get some reporter or another to sit through a briefing that resulted in a newspaper puff piece get my attention?  Not a chance.  So much for earned media.  Right? 

Earned attention isn't about paid vs unpaid.  It isn't even necessarily about where your messages appear or who served as the mouthpiece to deliver those messages.  That debate amounts to little more than sibling rivalry between ad brothers and PR sisters.  In fact, (as a consumer) I probably don't care if you buy advertising or earn coverage to reach me, provided that whatever I see or hear is meaningful and relevant to me. 

And therein lies the bottomline - I don't care...  Not "me" per se -- of course I care (about you, more than about anyone else) but normal people really and truly don't.  They are living busy, complicated lives and your marketing and communications matter very, very little in the grand scheme of things.

You earn attention by making people care -- by giving them a reason to stop what they're doing and take notice.  And you make people care by giving them something they can care about.  This could be a great product, a stand-out customer experience, a noteworthy new approach or something to talk about.  You make people care by making it all about them, by demonstrating that you cared first.

This isn't easy.  In fact, it's damn hard.  Certainly much harder than buying or earning media impressions.  But it's absolutely central to the success of your marketing efforts, because until you've earned your consumers' attention there's little chance they'll reward you with their interest, loyalty and hard earned money.

So -- ummm -- can someone explain to me why nobody seems to be talking about how marketers can earn attention instead of debating the different ways of gaining media placements?

Social media expert? No. Whatever expert? Yes.

If you pay attention to what the marketing blogosphere buzzes about, you have probably noticed that a number of people have been debating what qualifies someone to be a social media 'expert.'  Is it personal experience or a long list of client case studies?  Is it the title on your business card or some vague blurb in your Twitter bio?  Does simply being "born digital" (whatever that means) make you an expert?  Or given that today's social tools are so new and the rate of change so fast, does it even make sense to call anyone a social media expert?

I've been following the debate and gritting my teeth, holding back on adding my two cents.  But, generally speaking, my question is "who cares?" 

Seriously. 

Who cares what defines social media expertise? And why are we even devoting digital ink to answering that question?

Sure, there are a lot of charlatans.  But there are also a lot of people who understand both social media and the changes happening in business well enough to dispense sound advice to corporate clients.  They might work inside large corporations or at small agencies. They might work alone in their spare bedrooms or preach to the converted on conference stages around the world.  Unlike the charlatans, these people "get it" and companies in need of advice may want to pay attention when they talk.  

I'd like to think that I fall into the latter camp, but I wouldn't say that this makes me an 'expert' in social media.  Not by a long shot.  What's more, I wouldn't really want to be...

What actually is a social media expert anyway?

Is it someone who is up to speed on all the latest Web 2.0 tools and platforms?  It seems to me that this form of expertise is fleeting at best, akin to being an expert in shifting sands.

Is it someone who understands that companies and the people representing them need to be honest and personable, listen politely when other people talk, try to do nice things and be helpful when they can?  By that definition, weren't we all taught the basics of social media expertise when we were little kids?  Congratulations, you are an expert human being.  Next...

By one definition, almost nobody can be an expert.  By the other, just about everybody is.

But to me the more important question is, does the world really need social media experts at all?  Or do we really needs experts at whatever, who happen to understand how social media affects whatever they're expert in. 

That's a mouthful, I know - so let me explain.

I may not consider myself a social media expert, but I do consider myself a marketing expert.  I may not know everything there is to know, but I've been gainfully employed as a marketer for close to 20 years.  I've been trained in the fundamentals, learned some hard lessons, had some pretty impressive successes and some very painful failures.  I know how to take what I've learned and apply it to other people's business challenges.  I'm still learning, but I have plenty of my own expertise to offer.

Then again, while I don't consider myself a social media expert, I do think it is fair to say I know a good bit about both the technologies that power social and the human motivations and behaviors that make the technologies matter. 

Put everything together, and I'm a marketing expert who understands how social media affects the way I market.  Marketing is my "whatever."  Social media is not.

Your whatever can be... well... literally... whatever.  It's the thing you do that makes you unique and different. It's the thing you're really good at.  It's the thing you want to be known for above all else.

Within our industry:

• Doug Haslam is a PR guy who knows how to use social media to get the word out.  (I could have named 100 names, but this post was kinda, sorta inspired by something I read on his blog today.)
• David Armano is expert in visual thinking (among other things) and knows how to use social media to spread his ideas.

Or looking beyond the marketosphere:

• Gary Vaynerchuck is a wine expert who knows how to use social media to sell more wine.
• Scott Sigler is an author who knows how to use social media to build a community of rabid fans.
• Suzi Finer is a damn good cake decorator who knows how to use social media to sell more cakes.
• Natasha Wescoat is a talented artist who knows how to use social media to sell art and actually make a living doing what she loves.

All of these people have grown their businesses and/or achieved personal success by making good use of the same tools that 'social media experts' evangelize -- Twitter, Facebook, communities, blogs or podcasts -- but I'd be shocked if any of them introduce themselves as Twitter experts or Facebook consultants.  And if I were a corporate muckety muck, I'd pay closer attention to what people like Gary, Scott, Suzi or Natasha are doing than I'd pay to anyone who handed me a card reading "social media consultant."

If after reading this entire distribe you still believe that the one thing that you do want to truly be known for is your expertise in social media, then by all means go for it.  Just be aware that so-called social media experts are a dime a dozen today, and given the speed of change you might be obselete by tomorrow.  Even if you're good, it will be pretty hard to stand out from the pack -- and the glory, fame and riches you will earn as an expert may be short-lived.

Besides, your clients or employers probably don't want to work with a "social media expert."  And they almost certainly don't want to be social media experts themselves.  They just want to figure out if, when, where and how they might be able to use social media to accomplish the things they set out to accomplish.

Be the guy (or gal) who solves that challenge.  Make it your whatever, but keep in mind that the things your client needs to accomplish probably bear a greater resemblence to selling cakes than to writing the perfect tweet.

GV Sighting: All that twendy Twitter twalk

Busy week... or maybe I should say twizzy tweek (which is, I suppose, a busy week for a twotal Twitter geek.  Unless Twitter+geek is tweek.  Ugh...)

Anyway, workload and a business trip that lasted one day longer than it was meant to couldn't keep me from spending a few minutes on the phone with a reporter from The Canadian Press, talking about the new vocabulary (#5) that has emerged among the Twitterati.  Crap, I just did it again, didn't I?

If you're on Twitter, you know what I mean.  The alternately endearing and annoying habit of appending a "tw" to the beginning of otherwise normal words, resulting in mash-ups like tweeps, tweetup, twoast, twendy, twetiquette and of course tweethearts.  If you're not on Twitter, you can get some schooling by visiting the Twictionary.

Either way, you may want to see what a rhetoric professor, a social commentator (whatever that is) and I had to say about Twitter twalk.  Pop on over to the CTV site to read the article.

Discuss social with me: 2009 Mprofs B2B Forum

The MarketingProfs Business-to-Business Forum was one of my favorite conferences of 2008.  I debuted my r u ready presentation to a roomful of marketers, met lots of great people and had tons of fantastic hallway conversations.  So this year, I'm going back for more -- but with a twist.  Rather than giving a stand-up presentation, I'll be leading a small, interactive discussion designed to give 30 or so marketers practical ideas for how to do social media marketing right and deliver real results.

This year's B2B Forum takes place on June 8th and 9th at the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel, with my session happening at 11am on the 9th.  The details are still coming together, but here's what participants can expect:

What Will Social Media Do for My Business?

June 9th, 11:00am - 12:15pm

Have you been asking yourself this question?  Many b2b marketers want to get involved in social media but aren't sure where to start or what the value really is.  Join us for this interactive exchange of ideas between social media experts and attendees.  This session promises to be a lively discussion about how you can use social media to enhance your marketing programs and achieve a higher ROI.  You'll learn not only from the panel experts but from your peers facing similar challenges.

Sound interesting?  Of course it does.

You can learn more and register at the MarketingProfs site.

Twitter is this year's Second Life

I know what you're thinking: "Verdino has finally lost his mind." While I'll admit that, to the casual observer, Twitter and Second Life bear very little resemblance to one another, the truth is that there are more than a few points of comparison -- both positive and negative, both trivial and significant. 

Last night I made a list of nearly twenty similarities -- and that was just off the top of my head, while multi-screening and talking on the phone.  Here are 10 of them.  Give them a read and weigh in with your own thoughts...

1) Both Twitter and Second Life are built around the concept of virtual presence.  Sure, they approach presence from entirely different angles, but they are both presence-oriented applications and really only come to life when they are populated by people having real-time conversations.  Looking at this through a business lens, when H&R Block began dispensing tax advice on Twitter and offering people the opportunity to 'sit' with a tax advisor in Second Life (both programs were piloted in 2008), they were really just testing two variations on the same theme -- the ability of a company to use new technology to have real-time conversations with its customers.

2) Avatars, avatars, avatars.  If you're gonna maintain a virtual presence, then you've gotta represent.  Second Lifers agonized over whether their Shogun warrior or hot chick in leather avatar best reflected their mood on any given day.  Twitter users put similar emphasis on which itsy bitsy square image of their face makes them look smartest, most approachable, funniest, most attractive, weirdest or most like their SL avatar.

3) Twitter and Second Life were both hailed as the next big thing -- until someone pointed out that they weren't actually big.  Remember the heady days of 2006, when each morning brought a fresh report of just how big Second Life was getting?  SL-maker Linden Lab loved crowing about the millions and millions of residents living in the virtual world, with the overall number growing by tens of thousands per day.  The only problem was that a deep dive into the numbers revealed that the vast majority of those so-called residents were simply inactive accounts.  Similarly, public estimates put Twitter's total user base somewhere in the 4-6 million member range, leading to much conversation about the mainstreaming of microblogging.  But topline numbers only tell part of the story.  According to HubSpot's State of the Twittersphere, the number of active users is a mere fraction of the total. Which kinda leads me to my next point...

4) Twitter, like Second Life, is where the geeks are.  I know we think we're normal people, but we're not.  We're early adopters.  We're social media insiders.  We're so-called influencers.  We go to parties and, of course, we trade Twitter handles so we can keep in touch.  Normal people don't do this.  Normal people avert their eyes when we mention Twitter during otherwise polite conversation.  This isn't just coming from me -- recently, Twitter CEO Ev Williams stated that he doesn't expect 'real people' to be on the service for another several years.  And trust me: as soon as lots of so-called normal people flock to Twitter, the early adopters will be griping about how the service just isn't the same anymore. In fact, if you're looking to reconnect with some of your old Second Life buddies, I think I know where you might be able to find them (hint: on Twitter.) Speaking of geekiness...

5) Both services gave rise to 'secret languages' that are all but meaningless to people who don't use the service.  Second Life gave us sim, rez, HUD, grid and griefers, plus the concepts of the SLURL, Linden dollar and the SLT time zone.  Twitter gives us DM, tweet, tweeple, tweetup and an endless array of otherwise normal English words preceded by "tw-", while providing us with a clear distinction between friends and followers, giving us a new way to use the @ symbol, and fueling the popularity of the tiny URL. If you're an active social media dude or dudette, you probably understood this paragraph perfectly well.  If not, I may as well have written it in Klingon.

6) Both are built on buggy technology that hardcore users love to hate, but everyone else probably just plain ol' hates.  This was probably Second Life's longest running inside joke and also at the heart of its inability to scale. It lagged, it crashed, it acted as weird as a pink-spotted purple dragon avatar. Twitter eats tweets, drops adds and re-drops functionality willy nilly, and in its brightest shining moments serves up it's now infamous Fail Whale.  A casual user might give Twitter a try and walk away frustrated, while the most hardened Twitterati wear their beloved platform's foibles as a badge of honor.

7) Google came along to validate both models -- but then failed to make an impact.  And nobody cares.  When Google launched Lively last year, many saw it as a sure sign that virtual worlds were picking up steam.  But then Google shuttered Lively without much fanfare.  When Google acquired Twitter-competitor Jaiku, many took this as a sign that microblogging was mainstreaming.  But since it's Googlification, Jaiku has been more or less stagnant.  This certainly challenges the popular notion that Google is going to own the entire Internet one of these days, but there's still a shot that they'll just acquire Twitter and get on with it. OK - so now that we have 7 points under our belts, I think it's time to brace for the real hits. :-)

8) Both are magnets for lazy marketers.  I'm not going to argue that marketers shouldn't be thinking about how to use Twitter to connect with consumers.  I never argued that marketers shouldn't take a serious look at Second Life either.  But I kinda wonder how expending resources (if not money) to have someone on your team deliver priority customer support to a mere 10,000 or so Twitter followers without first fixing the traditional customer support infrastructure that frustrates your millions and millions of other customers makes business sense.  In fact, is it any different than spending resources (and money) to allow a few hundred or thousand Second Lifers to wander around your virtual hotel or test drive your virtual concept car?  Both reek of "shiny object syndrome" and a shallow attempt to check off a box on a list of innovation tactics.  What I'm saying is: if you're a company planning to do Twitter, you need to plan on doing it right.  And you need to understand where it fits into the bigger picture.  Otherwise, you should be prepared for this year's pat on the back ("great job, you're an innovator") to earn you a prime position in next year's negative case study. But while we're on the subject of next year...

9) Nobody will be talking about Twitter next year.  Maybe that's a bit extreme, but it certainly seems like Twitter is riding a massive wave of hype right now.  Put another way, Twitter is mainstream media's current "social media it girl" -- just like Second Life was a few years ago.  And we all know how that story ended; the wave crashed against the rocks, and the tone of the coverage changed considerably.  Second Life went from "you've gotta try it" to "you'd be foolish to waste your effort," and it seemingly happened between the June and July 2007 issues of Wired.  It doesn't take much to turn today's media darling into tomorrow's media target.  So maybe people will still be talking about Twitter, but mark my words -- the tone of the media coverage will be a lot less "gee whiz" and a lot more "what were we thinking."  But that's OK...

10) Much like Second Life, Twitter isn't the real story anyway...  If your social media consultant is telling you that you absolutely must have a Twitter strategy, you need to have security escort them out of your building.  Immediately.  You don't need a Twitter strategy.  You didn't need a Second Life strategy.  In fact, there is no such thing as a Twitter or Second Life strategy.  Both of these things -- along with the dozens of other emergent media options marketers can choose from -- are at best tactics.  At worst, they're just enabling technology platforms.  They might have a place in your marketing strategy, but none of these things are the strategy in and of themselves. 

As marketers, business people and just plain old people, we need to look beyond the story ("hey everyone, shiny new thing here") to find the story behind the story ("we are staring into the eye of a significant new truth.")  In the case of Second Life, the real story focused on SL as a peek into the 3D future of the web or a hint at the next wave of human-to-human interaction (don't think so?  watch your kids in Webkinz or Club Penguin.)  In the same vein, Twitter itself doesn't matter (at least it doesn't matter much.)  What matters is the rising propensity of people to publicly share even the most minute details of their daily lives, the shift from the asynchonous connectivity of traditional social networking to the real time connectivity of presence, and the rising expectations among even a relatively small subset of consumers that everything from information to service to support to access can (and should) be delivered instantaneously.  The real story lies somewhere in that rambling sentence, I think.  Try not to miss the tworest for the twees (sorry - see point #5.)

Microsoft shows us 2019 in under two minutes

Love 'em or hate 'em in the present, you've gotta admit that Microsoft does a pretty good job of envisioning the future.  At last week's Wharton Business Technology Conference, Microsoft Business Division president Stephen Elop presented a video demonstration of how we might be interacting with technology (and one another) ten years from now.  As you might guess, we can expect lots of cool touch-interactive surfaces, digital paper and plenty of seamless connectivity.

<p>&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=&quot;http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-GB&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;playlist=videoByUuids:uuids:a517b260-bb6b-48b9-87ac-8e2743a28ec5&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;showPlaylist=true&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;from=shared&quot; target=&quot;_new&quot; title=&quot;Future Vision Montage&quot;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Video: Future Vision Montage&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

[Click through to watch the video.]

More coverage at PSFK and I Started Something.