When the holidays roll around, starting with Thanksgiving in late November, we often hear people say that we need to be thankful.
Indeed, with the economy sinking more each day, hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work, and many more on the cusp of losing their homes, it is even more critical now than ever to find some silver lining, as well as to look ahead.
We all have our favorite commercials or tv programs. Growing up in the 1980’s, shows went through periods of great popularity, and at times, rapid decline. I remember the ALF craze, which my daughter wants to get into. I am resisting and holding ground. Then there was Miami Vice - which still lives on in my house, much to my wife’s dismay. And real quality television, like Sledge Hammer, Mike Hammer and Saturday morning cartoons.
However, the landscape has changed. As soon as cable tv and high speed internet access became more common, the shape of what we watch and how we watch video began to change. Likewise, the kinds of videos that “work” or resonate with us as viewers, has also changed.
After just having watched a very funny video of one of my colleagues (discovered by another colleague who searched YouTube), I got to thinking about the kinds of videos we watch online and on television, and what really works for us and what does not. Is it humor, drama, pop culture? Or is there something more complex at issue here?
To answer that question, I’ve decided to review some videos that I have enjoyed recently online to see if I can identify any common themes. Your comments are encouraged, as are your own video selections… And no porn or attachments please!
Email me at: mike@hackmer.com
VIDEO 1
Rabbit Bites: An Interview with William Redpath
A lot of buzz recently has been how Twitter was faster to alert people around the recent earth quakes than news organizations. This has led to some conversation about Twitter’s business model and potential applications for businesses.
A few weeks ago I had some thoughts about Twitter and its possible development of an emergency alerting tool (I’ll post sometime soon - though I may back-date it) – among other things. However, in reading some recent blog posts, I see Twitter’s ability as a Web 2.0 news and information aggregator as being the immediate advantage because unlike many news organizations – people consider Twitter “faster, unspun” with the negative of news organizations being that they are not participatory or focused on sharing.
WAIT A SECOND! HOLD THE PHONE!
No sooner had the statement about news organizations not being “focused on sharing” sprung forth and into this blog post, than I discovered a news organization mentioned in a blog post that IS using Twitter to reach out to its specific communities and engage people in conversations (I am sure there are many more, btw).
NBCi4 - MIDWEST
Using Twitter allows reporters, editors and columnists the ability to get real-time stories from people on the ground as well as drive content to people via Twitter, and get specific feeds mentioning their news organization in the different Twitter search engines. So, Twitter is a natural fit for every kind of mass media.
See page where I got the above screen shot at: http://www.nbc4i.com/midwest/cmh/news/nbc4now.html.
The value for radio, tv and newspaper is clear… engage your audience, expand your coverage, grow your audience, and help drive people back to your web properties (where monetization can in many instances occur).
From a marketing perspective, I think a key development strategy (for companies involved in the widget / desktop application space) is integrating Twitter with social communicators / desktop applications / widgets. Doing so would create a “must have” application for news organizations (as well as other markets). Direct Twitter conversations could fuel traffic to radio contests, news / network events, broaden community activism, and much, much more.
As far as emergency managers are concerned, using Twitter within a desktop application or somehow finding a way to convert the Twitter feed (this would take some technical experience with the Twitter API to determine if such an approach were possible) into a CAP (common alerting protocol) message, would create another inbound and outbound communication stream. Alert managers could receive real-time information that could be shared with first responders and others. Likewise, alert managers also could distribute messages via a CAP-based system to Twitter, and thereby reaching their constituents through another touch point. Such an option, for example, would prove enormously useful on a college campus.
In the end, I think the technical and business applications for a simple micro-blogging platform, like Twitter, are starting to come to the head. The question on my mind now is… is Twitter already working with a company on integrating its system with an emergency alert solution, and how many other widget / desktop application / social communicators out there will heed the call and integrate Twitter functionality into their products for the benefit of their customers.
It took a man just 150 helium balloons and lawn chair to become an instant sensation. The man I’m speaking about is Kent Couch, who pulled together the makeshift airship in an attempt to go from Bend, Oregon to Idaho.
(AP Photo/Jeff Barnard)
On the surface, this may seem like hardly the right imagery to describe using social media for innovation, but in a way its not.
Couch is an adventurer, and willing to suspend conventional thought to try something a bit off the wall. At its essence, those are the qualities that get us all looking at the world with less routine and dreaming big.
Now, this may sound crazy, but think of Couch’s idea and how there may be parallels to your business - its marketing initiatives or product development. What did Couch do to get his balloon-lawn-chair to take off?
Well, we can speculate that he had the desire to do something different, and thought up the idea to travel by balloon in his lawn chair. Next, he probably evaluated how many balloons it would take to get him airborne, based on his weight and the weight of the chair, etc. After that, he figured out what was realistic in terms of how far he should expect to go with the craft he built. Finally, he set out to build, test, and launch his idea.
All in all, a pretty familiar process to many of us, right?
In fact, Couch is said to be equipped with a BB gun and a blowgun to pop balloons should his altitude get too high and 15 barrels of cherry Kool-Aid to release if he gets too low to the ground. So, for fun, we can round off this example and say that both those things, the BB gun and the Kool-Aid, represent customer response - designed to bring him down to earth when things get out of hand and to give him a boost of steam upward with ideas fueling innovation and growth.
When it comes to developing innovative uses of social media, we all need to think a little bit differently to solve conventional challenges. Social media is all about connection and communication with other people. The growth of social networks, interactive platforms, and technology that links people together has been phenomenal, and continues to move at a fast pace. This means there are no bad ideas, or unworthy experiments, because what seemed to be impractical or impossible one day could be the opposite tomorrow.
In yet another series of examples from the real world, we’re reminded of the power of social media and people to not only expose fraud, but also demand accountability.
Larissa Fair of Livingston Communications tweeted on an AP story that appear on CNN.com (Faked tiger photo sparks Web furor) recently about the use of a fake tiger in what appeared by the Chinese online community to be another example of the government ignoring common sense and using false images and lies in their never-ending propaganda campaign.
The story is a simple example of fraud. A poor farmer, responding to a contest, used a poster of a tiger and placed it in various angels in the forest. Using a digital camera, the farmer created the appearance that there was, indeed, a tiger in the woods. However, the shininess of the image and the fact that tiger never changed its pose or position, despite being photographed from multiple directions, immediately fueled speculation of a fraud.
(Xinhua)
The government, however, thought they had a propaganda coup on their hands. Instead of investigating the possibility of a fraud and the growing skepticism online, the local / regional Chinese government used the image’s popularity to promote tourism to an economically depressed area. When the challenges to the image’s authenticity grew, the government did not back down - remaining resolute in its affirmation. Ultimately, the pictures were so wildly recognized as a fraud, that government had no choice but to admit as much.
But the damage had been done.
The result of a poor farmer’s desire to make money from a government-run contest for photographs that showed proof of the rare animal’s existence, and the government’s effort to allegedly boost tourism to an impoverished part of the country with a story of a rare tiger sighting, only furthered the mistrust many of China’s citizens have for their government.
In a country where the disparity in wealth from those who live in rural regions compared to the cities is substantial, citizens were fairly forgiving of the farmer, who the government later punished for fraud. However, they were less forgiving of the government which failed to hear protests or assertions from the online community that the photo was faked, and later refused to accept real responsibility for the spread of the photo - only offering a meek acknowledgment that the photo was not genuine.
When a tribe and ethics are LOST
Another example occurred with the now infamous “lost tribe” photographed a few months ago. The media picked up on the photographs, and reporters identified the tribe as being undiscovered and not having interacted with people outside of their tribe.
(Gleison Miranda, Funai /AP Photo)
After some investigation by The Guardian, the photographer revealed that the tribe was not lost, but indeed had been known for over two decades. His efforts to demonstrate their presence was an attempt to force “Peru to re-examine its logging policy in the border area where the tribe lives.” The pictures were taken, he had said, to help draw attention to them and discourage development that may poach on tribal territory.
Many media outlets were hesitant to identify what many were considering a hoax and issue a retraction. So much publicity had been made of the discovery - some news outlets were fearful of admitting to having been duped.
After the Guardian story came out and more media began to call the discovery a hoax, the organization that employed the photographer, Survival International, protested the Guardian’s characterization of the tribe being “lost”. According to a piece on ABC.com, Survival International’s director Stephen Corry said in response that “The [Guardian] article claims to ‘reveal’ that the tribe photographed was neither ‘lost’ nor ‘unknown.’ The reality is that neither Survival nor the Brazilian government claimed they were.”
So, who is REALLY at fault here?
The mass media is at fault for not fully vetting the story, but at the end of the day, Survival International bares the most blame for the characterization of the story and also its fall-out. Just because Survival International never said the tribe was “lost”, full disclosure in a discovery of that nature is paramount. Making a more detailed disclosure after release of the news created the appearance that the organization, much like the Chinese farmer and the government, had perpetuated a fraud. Parsing a few words and being “technically” correct, however subtly, is not a valid excuse anymore.
What do both examples teach us?
What I found interesting about both stories is that they remind us how fast information can travel on the internet, and how important listening to your audience and taking responsibility can be.
While the Chinese government claims to have learned from the situation, the only real lesson is that command and control does not work when people have access to the internet and social media tools. As much as the government works to suppress communication, it continues to fight a losing battle and in the process, alienates itself from its citizens prompting revolt both virtually and in reality (one wonders why the US does not employ the same strategy with Cuba, but that’s a blog post for another day).
Survival International had a strong opportunity to draw attention to its core mission, but failed by not providing enough information and making sure media outlets received the full story. At the end of the day, a fascinating discovery and the plight of indigenous tribes in the Amazon was overshadowed by weather or not Survival International and its photographer had misled the world.
After making my initial post about Blog Potomac, I’ve decided to write something shorter along the lines of customer interaction.
Lionel Menchaca, Digital Media Manager and Chief Blogger at Direct2Dell, had some excellent points during Blog Potomac that deserve some mention in this space.
For one thing, Menchaca started in tech support providing information and support to customers. This experience gave him crucial insight into both the issues from Dell products that were negatively impacting customers, as well as how Dell customer support was causing anguish and frustration.
One of the important themes in Menchaca’s presentation was the need to “listen” to what people were saying. For Dell, learning about what customers were talking about - the core listening stage- helped them to understand the fundamental issues at stake, which in turn helped to drive solutions.
Another important factor for Menchaca was to establish his voice as a blogger, and learn how to connect with other people. Customer support is not only about listening and responding with technical answers, its communicating those answers in a clear, friendly and understandable manner. When its done correctly, the results are going to be worth it.
Of course, managing the dialog you have with your customers not only depends on listening and communicating, but also managing expectations. You have to know the limits that exist within your company, and not risk over-promising and under-delivering for your customers on support issues.
Playing the expectation game also is not something reserved for the customers. Internal managers are interested in the results from customer support oriented blogs. The key here is to make sure that executives and managers understanding that a learning curve exists for everyone. What’s more, people need to recognize that positive as well as negative conversations are going to take place in this environment. As Geoff Livingston would say, “You cannot control the conversation”. However, convincing your CEO or direct supervisor that having “negative” conversations is just as valuable is not an easy task.
When its all said and done, Menchaca mentioned some other challenges that are important for many businesses that seek to establish a blog for customer support:
Lastly, I think it is important to note that if you blog with your customers in mind, and work towards establishing relationships - you can drive improvements in your company’s brand, reputation, product development, and in some cases, customer satisfaction, which is ultimately measured in repeat business and referral business. Dell has proven to be a good industry case study of this approach.
Last Friday, June 13th (yes, Friday the 13th), I ventured to Blog Potomac, where Geoff Livingston and his team at Livingston Communications, the folks at Viget Labs, WordBiz.com, Inc., and others put together a premiere social media marketing event for the greater Washington DC area at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA.
First of all, I should probably change the title of this blog entry to read “DC Marketing and Communications Professionals Gather for Blog Potomac”. When asked who was in marketing, communications or PR, close to 200 hands went up, prompting the emcee, Josh Hallett, to say, “Holy shit!”
But true to its form, Blog Potomac was exactly what marketing and communications professionals needed - a solid event geared around social media.
THE STARTING POINT
One topic discussed over and over again during Blog Potomac was about starting a blog at the corporate level. For anyone who has tried to get their company more engaged in using social media, writing a blog has been the logical starting point. With bloggers permeating mass media and popular culture, the chances your corporate executives have heard about and even read a blog or two is pretty high. Whereas, going to the CEO or division head about initiating a company Twitter account might get a more skeptical response.
Before your blog initiative gets underway, there are some important factors you need to take into account, which the speakers discussed during Blog Potomac.
ONCE YOU ARE ROLLING
Assuming you have built an initial strategy, have your team assembled and everyone is ready, willing and able to contribute (no small task in itself), another critical component is measurement.
If your organization is remotely skeptical about the value of blogging, being able to identify some return is going to be critical to continued support and future development. To that end, no one’s presentation was more anticipated than KD Paine’s talk on measurement and value.
One of the most important things Paine discussed was how measurement to many marketing and communications professionals is equated with monitoring. Paine noted that “measurement says, I’ve done something over here… I’ve started to listen and as a result something over here is happening…” Marketers certainly monitor web traffic, PPC advertising campaigns, and the like, but the key is not watching results as much as it is measuring how something has happened based on some other action that took place earlier - and evaluating those results against the goals you have set.
It all starts, according to Paine, with identifying what return you want from your marketing initiatives, what investment you want to put in, and start with some kind of benchmark for evaluating your success.
An important point Paine stressed in this context was that you “cannot measure via eyeballs.”
Measuring the amount of eyeballs, Paine said, was one of the most common mistakes people make. For example, if you developed a website or launched a widget and measured strictly on eyeballs, what are you gaining? In business, eyeballs are never the most important factor; leads and business opportunities are. Items such as downloads of a white paper, purchases of a publication or software solution, clicks on advertising, and the like are all specific results stemming from goals your team sets. At the end of the day, it all comes down identifying your goals and then measuring based on that criteria.
KD Paine’s points were all about getting back to what you and your business / organization want to do, and making sure you are keeping track and measure the right things.
Some questions for consideration along this line are:
LET’S MORALIZE
Lastly, Kami Huse, MyPrPro, gave a very solid presentation on blogging ethics. As with many of the presenters, Kami was quick to point out that “blogging is not a sales channel. It’s a conversation channel.” If you treat your blog as just another sales tool, you are going to miss the point of blogging altogether.
Kami included a number of examples in her presentation, but the main take away, from my perspective, is that when managing a blog you need to stay away from manufacturing things (ie, fake outrage or a fake persona or online identity), and stick to building an honest identity and honest relationships.
If we accept that social media, and blogging as a subset of that, are about building relationships online, trust is such an important factor. Misleading people online is deadly, because it can destroy your company’s credibility in ways you cannot calculate. Huse suggested that we become anthropologists of social media - in the sense that we study the culture of the communities we are participating in, so we know what is acceptable online behavior and what is not acceptable. The same holds true of the standards you create for your own company and its blog initiative.
IN CONCLUSION
As with any one-day conference or un-conference, a lot of material tends to get rolled into the various presentations, experiments take place with speakers, topics, and formats, and challenges occur (the lack of wireless was the only real frustrating element). But as this was the inaugural Blog Potomac event, it was an exciting start to what I, and many others in the DC region hope will be an annual event for many years to come.
Though the focus was overwhelmingly on blogging, everyone recognizes that there is more to social media than just a blog. However, taking that first step in using social media for your company or organization is not easy, and blogging can represent the easiest way to step forward. In that regard, Blog Potomac accomplished a valuable service - stressing the fundamentals marketing and communications professionals all need to consider.
As some people out there know, I attended the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition in Chicago with my colleague, Mike Ferrara. Our presence at IRCE lasted from Monday, June 9 through Wednesday, June 11th. Since our focus as first-time exhibitors was the exhibit hall (go figure, right), my summary is nothing more than a series of observations from the exhibit hall. This may help others who are considering attending the IRCE next year.
1. In walking the show floor during the set-up stage, I noticed there are a lot of great innovators and companies focused on fraud protection, as well as managing retail supply chains and the transactions process. There also were companies that specialized in developing RSS feeds for retailers and blogging platforms (I thought this was interesting b/c I wonder about how many online retailers and their customers use RSS), content aggregators, international shipping companies, distribution warehouses and more. On the whole, an impressive array of companies that fit both the virtual and tangible worlds of online retailing. At this point, I have a long list of companies I want to meet with during the show.
2. Day 1 is short (only about 3 hours), but not without a lot of buzz at our booth. Mike Ferrara and I rolled in early to get set up, and by 4:00 pm (Central) the exhibit hall is filled with people getting ready for the kick-off. The demo application we have runs perfectly (kudos to Tommy Buono @ ActiveAccess for getting it built). I’ve download a flash demo, but people are more interested in seeing the live product - that really draws them in. Our initial conversations go very well, and we alternate walking the show a little bit to see other companies. Ferrara has some meetings scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, and after Day 1, we’ve got even more.
3. Now, into Day 2 (Tuesday, June 10, 2008), I’ve had a chance to talk with a few people on my list, and was surprised to discover how many other companies were first-time exhibitors, like ourselves. The impression of these companies, as well as our own thus far, has been fairly positive. Traffic to everyone’s booth has been steady and the overall number of business contacts high. But, one person I spoke with perhaps said it best, “We’ll know more in two weeks when the free trials of our software end.”
4. One quick thing I will note - as with all shows, only those with the right access can enter break-out sessions. This is a common practice. But with that said, I think that security for these sessions, on average, has not been oppressive - allowing a few people to come in and out to hear different speakers regardless of their badge. I don’t think this is bad thing - though the folks at IRCE might disagree. However, while session security was mild, security around the cookie and brownie trays throughout the exhibit hall was tighter than that found at most US nuclear weapons facilities. When they say, “The cookies will be available at 1:30″ they really mean 1:30… Those of us itching to grab a quick, early snack, were forced to wait.
5. After 4 pm on Day 2 and I must compliment the staff with the IRCE. They have done an excellent job organizing events, managing break-out sessions and how people filter in and out of the exhibition hall. Strategic placements of food stations and other services has helped with the traffic flow. We know based on the schedule when there may be a slight let-off in floor traffic, which gives Mike and I a chance to meet with folks and explore the hall. Our opportunities do not last terribly long, but then again, today is a long day. We start at 9 am and run until almost 7 pm.
6. Closing thoughts on Day 2 - integration is major conversation piece with the people who stop by. We’ve had quite a few prospects who want to integrate a database with the ActiveAccess desktop system, so that end-users receive very targeted, account-specific information, instead of just our usual content and video. Other conversations hinted that multiple language offerings may be necessary as well. Certainly, we can see this coming. Technology is evolving, and widgets and desktop applications need to become more robust if they are to continue to survive. Of course, ActiveAccess has done some level of integration with other clients in the past, so we’re well-positioned. These new cases are very exciting though…
7. Day 3 (Wednesday, June 11th, 2008), and Mike and I are prepared for another long day (9 am to 4 pm). We had a disappointing evening (the Celtics lost to the Lakers), but our activity at IRCE has not slowed. Another steady flow of major corporations, including traditional discount stores / retailers come by and some large online retailers. I wish I could drop some names, but we all know that would not be right! Other companies we spoke with yesterday also have more questions, so they bring their teams with them. Interest is very high. Towards the end of the show I met with a company that specializes in helping spread products and data via word of mouth. The company representative I spoke with mentions they have a free API that can work within the ActiveAccess solution and really enhance the “share with a friend” feature. Very cool…
8. Closing out Day 3, Mike and I are headed out, as the show has just closed. High-fives are exchanged… On the whole, speaking from my personal perspective and the notes I took, the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition was a excellent success for ActiveAccess. Obviously, we need to wait several weeks to see exactly how much of a success, but I think the meetings Mike and I had, both at the booth and throughout the exhibit hall, were very positive.
Posted by Michael Hackmer
BIA Financial Network
It struck me as I was reviewing my plans for the upcoming Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition in June that there is not a lot of attention on using email to reach one’s customer base in the Conference agenda and session discussions about online marketing. In the not so distant past (which means a year in the new technology era), strategic email marketing was still regarded as the most effective and affordable means to reach an audience and maintain a connection.
So, what has changed?
For starters, people are suffering from email fatigue in a substantial way (Wikipedia actually refers to this as “email bankruptcy”, but I’ve since added the term today). According to some estimates email is a $650 billion drag on the economy, because people engage in too many unnecessary responses and waste time reading messages that they either should not have received in the first place, or simply add no value to their overall productivity (I’ve actually been guilty of that several times as I am writing this blog entry).
The other factor is SPAM. Heinz Tschabitscher, contributor to About.com, writes that
This is not to say that email is no longer a productive solution to marketing and lead generation. In fact, Spam exists not because a group of a few thousand people globally have nothing better to do until they get their Nintendo Wii, but rather because it is highly profitable.
As a basic premise - assume a mid-level spammer distributes between several hundred million messages to a billion messages in a month, and just received a .03% or .05% response to those emails, the number of leads would be in the tens of thousands. According to Consumer Reports, in one month last year, approximately 650,000 Americans made purchases in phishing scams initiated by spammers.
I think it is safe to say that the issue surrounding email as a marketing tool is not a question of profitability. Pound for pound, it still remains highly cost effective and can yield positive results. However, the shear mass of data coming through nowadays and the volume of Spam that each of us receives, truly minimizes the ability of email to really inform and engage people in a way that builds positive brand recognition. If anything, people are shying away from email marketing, because there is a growing stigma surrounding it, but also because they are finding that reaching the “Inbox” is no longer the value it once was.
This leads us to the question, “If not email marketing, then what?”
A lot of the buzz lately is around using social media to get your marketing message out to the masses. In fact, the IRCE agenda is filled with sessions on Web 2.0 strategies and social media solutions designed to help eretailers.
In our own experience, we have found using social media, such as blogs and webinars, social networking sites (For example, check out our ParentPower community on Facebook and join me on LinkedIn), Twitter, and the like, to be a very helpful way to both discover new solutions and new ideas as well as get more direct interaction with our customers and content providers, which enables us to hear about the user experience first-hand… sometimes as it is taking place. You simply cannot get that from an email that someone may or may not get a chance to read - assuming you reached the inbox in the first place.
The challenge surrounding social media, however, is often overlooked by its dynamic appeal, uniqueness and the subtle suggestion by the news media that everyone is doing it, and if you are not - you’re missing out. In fact, the challenge with using social media and networking is quite obvious when you think about it: it’s time intensive.
Just ask yourself, “How effective would I be if I walked into a room of 50 or 100 strangers, all engaged in their own conversations, and shouted, “I’m offering a 20% discount on a new product that will mean you never have to clean your kitchen floors again!”? Not only would you annoy a lot of people, there is a strong likelihood that you would discourage the very people who may be interested in such a product under normal circumstances from even approaching you.
The truth behind these strategies is that they are based on building relationships (see Livingston on wooing bloggers), and relationships take time. This whole concept of building relationships is what the new marketing paradigm is built around. In the not so distant past (we all know what that means now, right?)… email campaigns were the quick and easy way to broadcast your brand and offerings to the masses. Today, quick and easy is how you bake a cake or clean a toilet bowl (And yes, I lifted that from Tango and Cash). Is it how you run your marketing?
Right now, as you read this, the masses are worn out from it all, and they want meaning… they want substance. On the one hand, this forces all of us in marketing to take on more responsibility and work. But on the other hand, it gives us a tremendous opportunity to provide meaningful solutions to people (fyi - its the customer’s perception of what is meaningful that you need to address) and establish relationships that go deeper than a name on a message.
Of course, this brings us to another solution to the growing decline in the value of email and online marketing strategies, which are desktop applications.
The benefit of desktop applications, more so than one-dimensional widgets or email, is that they are all-inclusive communications vehicles. Not only do they engage your audience by providing a bridge to relevant web content, they provide a one-stop resource for video, audio / podcasts, flash-based games, and in the case of ActiveAccess, include a built-in RSS reader, interactive weather map and links to other resources. The multi-faceted nature of a desktop application, not to mention that the application is on the desktop all the time a person is on their computer, is more engaging for the user, less fatiguing, and helps build a content relationship between the provider and the user that is unique.
What’s more, desktop applications, as a piece to your Web 2.0 puzzle, are not nearly as time intensive as other social media strategies. In fact, they are used to enhance your existing web strategy by providing a portal for your customers to reach you when they are not browsing the Internet.
For more information on how ActiveAccess can help your company or organization, shoot us an email at: info@activeaccess.com.
Or you can DM us through Twitter at: http://twitter.com/activeaccess.
I just had an interesting email exchange with a friend of mine who was concerned about posting an article he wrote on different sites or commenting about an issue he cares about. His concern was based on the idea that he did not want to appear to be promoting himself too much, or appear to be too biased. He even mentioned the idea of creating an alias or using others to post on his behalf.
That got me thinking. Are we so concerned about “self-promotion” that we actually stop saying what we want to say in public?
I remember Dick Vitale talking about an event he does for kids with cancer on Mike and Mike in the Morning. At one point, in the middle of a typically emotional and loud response, Dicky V brought up complaints he has received from people saying that he always promoting himself and his work as if it was a bad thing. Vitale’s response was, and I am paraphrasing here, “Come on, baby! If you don’t promote yourself or what you do - who is going to do it for you? Who will ever hear about what you are doing or why you are doing it?”.
Of course, in blogging, or interacting socially on any medium for that matter, we tend to confuse self-promotion with what we really want to achieve, which is a type of genuine sharing. Seth Godin has a really good short post on this in which he acknowledges that the very term “self promotion” is often used to described someone promoting him/herself at the expense of others. But do we really think that of everyone who promotes themselves?
It’s easy to see Dick Vitale get some flack, because I know of people who are tired of his routine and find his personality… well… annoying. But the truth is - Vitale’s pitch is designed to encourage awareness not so much of himself at the expense of others (fame for the sake of fame), but of his work to helping fight cancer. Translation - there is something genuine and true and useful connected to his promotional efforts. He wants to make a change, and by telling you about that - he is hoping you will join him in that cause.
To Godin’s point, so long as you are really promoting something useful - such as a useful ideas - or tactics or products that actually benefit the person they’re reaching out to, you really don’t fit into this more negative interpretation of “self promotion.”
The other component to this is that you should not let conventional perceptions about promoting yourself to deny you from making a public effort to change a trend or influence people. In the case of my friend, I recommend he take the plunge and get introduced to social media - particularly blogging - so he can experience for himself how people exchange ideas through their blogs and how others respond to them. Because if you hide behind an alias or keep yourself from spreading your useful ideas, you can’t expect to develop the clout or means for the change you want to achieve.
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