MediaBlather

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.

98: Why Doesn’t Staples Become a Publisher?

admin — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:32:22 +0000

Paul has been toying around with an idea for Staples, the big office retailer. With mainstream media and direct mail marketing becoming less and less effective, why doesn’t Staple go into the publishing business? It could become a trusted source of information for small business customers and earn its place at the table with the likes of Inc. magazine and Fast Company.

It’s not that easy, David notes. It takes time, money and commitment to become a media entity. Retail businesses don’t have much of any of those things these days.

However, Paul thinks that the times never been better for marketers to become publishers. Laid-off journalists can be had hired for pennies on the dollar compared to a few years ago and the cost of online publishing is vastly cheaper than the alternatives.

Our hosts agree that the bigger challenge may be cultural: Marketers are simply not brought up to think in terms of long-term customer engagements, which is what publishing requires. But it’s never too late to change.

Listen now: (10:04)

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97: WeTweet

admin — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:13:11 +0000

David is a recent convert to Twitter, while Paul has been using it for some time. Both agree that this red-hot social network, which has people transmitting their thoughts in 140-character increments, takes some getting used to. However the benefits are evident once you make Twitter part of your everyday routine. Doctors have used Twitter to describe the intricacies of brain surgery and people are even writing books using messages contributed by their followers.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Twitter is the number of third-party applications that have sprung up, which range from useful services like polling utilities to one that lets you calculate how much time you waste tweeting.

Rather than trying to list these apps individually, here are two massive collections of Twitter applications:

100 Twitter Tools to Help You Achieve All Your Goals

Twitter Fan Wiki

For the record, both our hosts recommend TweetDeck to more efficiently manage the flood of messages. Paul likes Monitter to track hot topics. They also agree that search.twitter.com is a fast and efficient search engine that lets you save results as RSS feeds so you can keep track of what people are saying about you at your own convenience.

(17:35)

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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)

Download link

95: That Southwest Style

admin — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 02:03:25 +0000

Paula Berg (Ragan Communications photo)

This week we talk to Paula Berg, Manager of Emerging Media for Southwest Airlines and the team leading the airline’s efforts in blogging, podcasting, and other social media.

In a corporate blogging world that has turned in mostly unspectacular results so far, Southwest is a standout. The company uses ordinary employees — not high paid executives — to tell its story, and they do so with marvelous candor and enthusiasm. Nuts About Southwest has a joyful irreverence that reinforces the airline’s offbeat, slightly goofy image. Recently, Southwest added video and podcasts to the mix in a manner that truly looks planned.

Southwest has done a lot of things right in this world, and we find out how customer conversations have changed the company’s policies, how Southwest gives its people lots of leeway in choosing what to contribute to the blog, the online “voice of the company and how its first Twitter-based “screenplay” came together in the past couple of weeks.

(17:08)

Download link

94: Roll Your Own Magazine

admin — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:50:36 +0000

This week Paul and David talk about the changing nature of custom publishing by looking at two different services: HP’s MagCloud.com and Amazon’s Kindle reader.

MagCloud creates custom magazines that can be printed, proofed, bound, polybagged and delivered via the US mails to your doorstep, all for a modest per-page fee. The magazines can be as professionally designed and produced as you’d like, using the standard Adobe publishing tools. They can also be highly targeted, like Fit Christian (right). David finds the combination of low and hi-tech appealing and just the ticket for a wide variety of PR and marcom needs.

Kindle, of course, is the versatile book reader that is now in its second incarnation and delivers a very solid user experience. Paul feels the gadget is just the beginning of the paperless era for frequent readers and offers a lot of compelling reasons — although neither of our hosts has actually ponied up their cold cash for the thing.

To listen, click on the player below.

To download, right click here and choose “Save As…”

93: The Travelin’ Mama

admin — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 13:20:51 +0000

Shannon Hurst Lane and three other professional travel writers were chatting at a conference early last year when they hit upon an idea. They were all moms with copious travel experience. Why not start a blog to advise families on destinations that are right for parents with kids? But this wouldn’t be your usual Mickey and Minnie family travel site. The Traveling Mamas, as they chose to call themselves, would also deal with real-world adult issues like where to get an alcoholic drink in the Magic Kingdom and how to take your kids to Las Vegas.

The Traveling Mamas site features a wonderfully homespun and playful voice layered onto the sage experience of people who know how to travel. Fifteen months after launch, it’s getting 50,000 visitors a month and a bouquet of awards, citations and recommendations from media outlets and other bloggers. The four mamas post prodigiously and their audience is coveted by destination marketers, who compete to get their attention. It’s all rather overwhelming and unexpected.

Shannon is Cajun Mama. She joins us midway through a trip in the Georgia wilderness. In 93 programs, this is the first time David and Paul have ever interviewed someone under these circumstances. Listen to find out more.

Also listen to find out about the nearly disastrous bicycling accident David suffered last week. He’s okay, but instead of sending flowers, he’d like listeners to support his ride for the National MS Society.

Listen to the podcast (17:01) (right click and choose “Save As…” to download)