MediaBlather » socialmedia

110: Is Q&A the new black?

strom — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 14:35:38 +0000

This week, Paul and David return to the airwaves and talk about the new wave of question-and-answer sites. The soaring popularity of Quora, the new social network that has people scrambling to deliver the best answers to each other’s questions, has created new interest in a tried-and-true metaphor. LinkedIn and Yahoo both have had its Answers sections for quite some time now. You can use these answer sites to build your professional credibility and visibility in the smallest of niches, but how do you know where to place your chips with so many options from which to choose? The duo discuss this growing trend.

You can download and listen to our podcast here.

Customer Conversations – An Interview with Mzinga Founder Barry Libert

admin — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 15:47:11 +0000

Barry Libert was just getting back on its feet again after six months in a wheelchair when Paul spoke to him recently. Two back surgeries had rendered the founder of Mzinga nearly helpless to accomplish some everyday tasks, and Libert had learned a lot about the helpfulness of others. Upon regaining his feet, he had bought shoes from Zappos, a company that is legendary for customer service. This was a good jumping off point for a discussion about the importance of customer care and the value of communities.

Libert knows a bit about this. Mzinga manages two billion conversations monthly for 15,000 communities on behalf of 300 well-known companies. Libert believes that customer input is absolutely essential to business success, but he acknowledges that many companies struggle to internalize and act upon honest feedback. In his new book Social Nation, he talks about the essential attributes of customer-driven social media success. In this interview, he talked about the importance of customer support as a differentiator in a globalized world, which companies do it well, his amazing Ducati experience and other topics.

Download the podcast (28:32)

109: Social media tools, tips and techniques

strom — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 10:57:44 +0000

This week Paul and David answer some common questions from their audience, and cover a wide range of suggestions on such things as their favorite add-on tools for Twitter and other social media sites. Specifically they discuss:

Where any federal agency can download apps at Apps.gov – apps for federal government workers along with social media contacts for each federal agency
There are lots of innovative uses of Twitter for notification, including this one from the Massachusetts Transportation Agency
Flickr photo sharing can be used to demonstrate more than just your vacation pictures, including this page that shows you dozens of different screen shots of URL shortening services. David’s favorite shortening service is bit.ly for the moment. Here is another innovative use by Dell with various picture collections.
When it comes to recommended frequency of posting on blogs and Twitter, Paul and David disagree about the specifics, you’ll have to listen to hear why, but you might want to consider timing your Tweets according to the time of day.
Speaking of which, here are two tools that can schedule your Tweets into the future (there are lots of others and many companies offer mobile phone apps as well): Tweetdeck and Seesmic
There are a number of third-party Twitter tools that can help you keep track of statistics, including TweetStats which will graph when you have Tweeted.
A number of tools can post to multiple sites with a single click or email, including Twitter, WordPress blogs, and You Tube, including Pixelpipe, Ping.fm, and Posterous.
Some other helpful Twitter tools include Dlvr.it, which picks up RSS feeds and set rules to post to particular sites and Knowem which can help you reserve your name on hundreds of different sites quickly. There is also Tweetmeme and Wefollow, both of which can be used to follow trends and keep track of what is being Tweeted at any particular moment. Twittervision can be used to find people in your local geographic area who are active with Twitter.
Tools to follow people in a specific industry, or share lists of Twitter users, include Listorious and Tweepml. It seems that Buzzable has gone out of business, as Paul mentioned in the podcast.
Quora is a site where you post questions and track answers via Tweets.

There is a lot more suggestions from both hosts. You can download the podcast (21:05) here.

105: Identity Crisis

admin — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 10:01:43 +0000

If the cap on the Gulf oil spill holds, BP will be grateful for more than one reason. In addition to ending its $4 billion nightmare, it will no longer have to contend with @BPGlobalPR, a Twitter account set up by an anonymous critic who has been skewering the company’s efforts to manage public opinion about the disaster.

“Attn: BP Employees- Office supplies do not belong to you. Please have some respect for other people’s property. #bpcares” is just one of the more than 400 scathingly funny barbs the prankster has posted over the past three months. On the day the cap was finally put in place, the author wrote, “Well, that wasn’t so hard.”

@BPGlobalPR has amassed a following 10 times larger than @BP_America, which is the oil company’s real Twitter account. What’s more, it now overwhelms BP’s real Twitter presence in search results.

This isn’t the only case in which Twitter squatters have embarrassed major brands. @ATT_Wireless_PR is doing the same thing with less success, at least so far. We discuss what challenges this creates for public relations departments and debate whether the world needs an independent authority to regulate user IDs as well as domains.

Play:

Download (right click and save) : http://gillin.com/Podcasts/MB-105.mp3

104: The Joy of Geocaching

strom — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 13:46:31 +0000

Paul and David return to the podcasting airwaves with a special show this week and an odd twist. Paul and his wife Dana have just published their latest book called The Joy of Geocaching. The couple, who have enjoyed the sport for many years, took time to interview dozens of cachers, as they are called, from around the world to tell their stories and provide a very readable guide to beginners. In the book are tips to get started, what equipment to purchase and Web sites to use, and other practical information. But the real treasure is how the common bond of caching has created this strong sense of purpose and trust among fellow cachers, and Paul and Dana tell some of the more interesting tales.

Audio link (right click to download)

103: Considering crowdsourcing

strom — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:02:08 +0000

We talk with Brent Frei of SmartSheet.com about the growing trend of crowdsourcing, the ability to farm out a series of tasks to a group of unknown contributors. Frei has put together a comprehensive report on the crowdsourcing industry that you can download here. He talks to David and Paul about some of the logistics of hiring these experts, how they are vetted and accounted for by their networks, the types of outsourced work that you want to consider for crowdsourcing, some of the companies that specialize in this area and the different types of crowdsourcing projects.

Here are some links to his published works:

Lead into Gold – the math related to your cost and the crowd worker’s earnings
PR, Internet Intern – do all kinds of research that just takes lots of time
Small Business Will Inherit the Earth - small businesses have to outsource lots of components of business that require specialties or time they don’t have
Entrepreneurial Shock – earn more doing less by outsourcing mundane portions of research
Grasshopper Case Study – build a custom list to an exacting spec for very little cost

You can download our podcast here (20:10):

Audio link (right click to download)

102: Social Media at IBM

admin — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:40:37 +0000

Anyone who was around the computer industry during the 1980s remembers IBM as a buttoned-down, almost paranoid company. In the years following the Justice Department’s antitrust suit, IBM became so tight with information that virtually no one other than designated representatives was allowed to utter a word in public without fear of retribution.

What a difference a couple of decades makes. Today IBM is one of the most prominent adopters of social media. Here are the numbers on usage of different tools by its 400,000 employees:

Internal blogs: 17,000
Members of the Beehive social network: 60,000
Daily page views on IBM’s internal wiki: 1,000,000
Participants in its four Innovation Jams: 500,000
IBMers on Twitter: 3,000
IBMers on Facebook: 52,000
IBMers on LinkedIn: 198,000

Big Blue applies social media both to internal and external communications. Because more than half the employees work outside of a conventional office, media like blogs and podcasts have become essential elements for tying teams together on projects.

Adam Christensen is Social Media Communications Manager at IBM. In that capacity, he helps define policies and best practices for dissemination across IBM’s global workforce. Not surprisingly, he’s also an active blogger, tweeter and member of multiple social networks. He tells David and Paul how IBM’s embrace of social media is opening up the company and making it more efficient.

Audio link (right click to download)

101: Driven a Ford Lately?

admin — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 12:16:40 +0000

Automotive companies aren’t usually thought of as models of institutional transparency, but when it comes to social media, that stereotype doesn’t hold. The big automakers have been some of the earliest and most enthusiastic adopters of customer conversations, in part because they believe their stories have been so poorly communicated by the mainstream media.

Scott Monty left a job at the conversation monitoring agency Crayon in 2008 to take on the challenge of helping the Ford Motor Co. reinvigorate its image with new media. In the intervening 14 months, the US auto industry has undergone a near meltdown, but Ford has escaped the carnage that drove rival General Motors into bankruptcy.

Monty is Ford’s ubiquitous online presence, with over 30,000 followers on Twitter alone. Among the initiatives he’s worked on is The Ford Story, a multimedia showcase of Ford’s work in fuel efficiency, design and engineering innovation. As he notes in this podcast, Ford has been rewarded for its openness by being hailed as a leader in social media adoption.

Monty manages to find time to tend to his popular blog, but has had to set aside, temporarily at least, another labor of love: His fascination with all things Sherlock Holmes. With the first new Holmes movie in years set for release this fall, now’s a good time to follow Scott Monty.

Click the arrow below to listen now

Or download the podcast (22:18)

Our 100th Show = Your Tweets

admin — Tue, 12 May 2009 17:21:21 +0000

Believe it or not, were about to record the 100th episode of MediaBlather.

In the spirit of new media, crowdsourcing and democratized information, we thought we’d use the latest social media tool of choice — Twitter — to help us with this program. So please contribute by answering the following question in 140 characters or less:

What’s great about social media?

By that we mean what’s great for you? How has social media changed your life, extended your circle of friends, made you more efficient, more informed, more tuned in and able to lose 30 pounds? Heck, tweet us even if social media hasn’t been all that great. Use your imagination and tweet the results using hash tag #100great.

We’ll devote our 100th program to sharing your comments, and we’ll even invite a couple of people to join us over Skype to share in the fun.

Of course, you’re welcome to leave more extended answers in the comments section below.

96: Social Media on Ice

admin — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 20:01:27 +0000

As the National Hockey League seeks to recover from its damaging 2004-2005 lockout, It’s turning to new media as a means to reach out to the public. Remarkably, half of all NHL fans don’t live near the teams they root for., so the league is using every medium and its disposal to connect people with their favorite teams. The NHL.com website has been relaunched with an integrated social network and publicity director Michael DiLorenzo is an active proponent of using blogs, twitter and social networks as a way to connect with the league’s constituency.

DiLorenzo practices what he preaches, blogging at http://www.fromtheblueseats.com/ and tweeting at umassdilo. He’s already sent 2,500 Twitter updates. Although he’s a fan, he’s also a shrewd media strategist, as you’ll see when you download the interview.

(16:52)

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