This kind of stuf has been on my mind alot and I have been wondering about the whole conversation thing and how much does it really mean to business. I am not a naysayer, in fact I still consider myself an evangelist for Social Media in genera, but personally I wouldn’t trust any evangelist who can’t look themself in the mirror and question their own faith. The presentation is a bit cute, but I do believe it makes a good point.

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She is offering her photography services gratis to families with young children where a parent has a life-threatening illness and may be facing limited time to enjoy their family. From the post on the Tot Shots Blog:

I know how devastating cancer in particular is and how difficult of a time it is for families faced with a similar situation. I recognize that professional pictures are probably the last thing on most people’s minds. However I also know that most families are trying to spend as much time together and to have as many good memories as they possible can together. This is why I think that it is only fitting to capture these moments. As such, I am offering a complimentary session and CD package to those families where a parent of young children is faced with the fact that they have a limited time left with their family. I think that these children will need something like this to cherish and look at in years to come.

As she is only a one person outfit and can’t support everyone who is in this position, so she is requesting that the referrals come through her existing clients.

Even though this is a blog about digital and word-of-mouth marketing, I would feel a little mercenary deconstructing this initiative. However, I will say that I think it is a smart business move as well as a wonderfully charitable way to give of oneself. I really, really like it when businesses can benefit from doing the right thing.

[tags] totshots, calgary, photography, charity,[/tags]

1. Increased media fragmentation – important, but The Long Tail opened and closed the book on that as a trend.

2. Internet as central hub for marketing and media campaigns – This trend is as old as the Net and it is the communications laggards that are only getting a clue on this one now. Personally I see 2008 as the time that this trend dies – in the sense that using the Internet as the marketing hub becomes a default position for all communicators.

3. Death of the Advertising interruption model – Again not a surprise for anyone involved in digital marketing and social media, but the fundamental shift that this represents is significant and one that I frequently discuss on this blog. Mass advertising is not dead, but the current business model in its final convulsion.

I really liked this quote:

As Adam Gerber of Quantcast has said, in the future, online media buying will be about “the re-aggregation of a fragmented audience that’s actually watching different things.”

Bingo! It is time for broadcast networks to re-establish the right to use the work “network” in an era when the network is ubiquitous.

I have always found the easiest way to look at these things as a Supply and Demand model. Value and price in classical economics is based upon scarcity, but what happens when supply becomes digital and therefore infinite? The only scarcity comes from the walled gardens, restrictions and other forms of friction that content owners place on our access. These barriers are smoothed out by the denizens of the net (i.e. TV has ads, Tivos make it digital, net users strip out ads and re-post tv shows as torrents where it is available to anyone without pay, ads or geographical barriers).

A simple way to look at this is:

When supply of _______ approaches infinity, ________’s value* approaches zero.

For example:

• When supply of music approaches infinity. CD’s value approaches zero.
• When supply of online video approaches infinity. TV shows with interruptive ads’ value approaches zero.
• When supply of blogs approaches infinity. Newspaper’s value approaches zero.
• When supply of podcasts approaches infinity. Radio with interruptive ads’ value approaches zero.

* By value I am referring to the value to the end purchaser, not the price they pay. Although in the long run it should be a foregone conclusion that as value drops, so must price. Otherwise extinction is certainly the result.

[tags] emarketer, trends, blogs, massmedia, music, TV, TheLongTail[/tags]

As for the blog I promise to be better in the coming weeks, but that promise is only worth the electrons that it was written on.

But also I do have some plans for Social Media Today which should be interesting, exciting and take things in a different direction. Stay tuned in the next couple of weeks for something new for your ears.

[tags] Social Media Today, Webwalker, blogging, podcast [/tags]

First DDB Radar. Big Agency launches Social Media arm, which I blogged about a while ago. David Jones comments on how they are not reaching out to the existing community, just the news trades – comment conversation ensues. Then today Steve Wright of DDB Radar writes a conversation-baiting post, saying half-in-jest that it was all part of the plan and by purposely shunning bloggers, Radar got blogged about.

The Second thing was a rant post by Jeremy Pepper on how Ad people are bad for Social Media and the rightful place of the practice is with PR practioners, which spawned a spirited rant from Hurricane Tamera again on Dave Jones blog when he supported Jeremy’s post (sorry I know this is confusing, but I am getting to the point now).

This stupid fight whether PR or Advertising owns, controls or is better suited to guide clients on social media has got to end. Anyone who knows jack crap about social media, admits that everyone is flailing in the dark (some just have slightly better night vision).

At great personal (and frankly uncharacteristic) risk of getting all Kumbaya on this issue, marketers of both stripes need to realize that the best advertising people are better at telling stories and being entertaining in communication. And ad types need to recognize that solid PR practioners are better at seeding conversations, transparency and influencing influential people.

Listen up, both sides, because I am more qualified* than the average marketing blogger to say this: We are going to need BOTH sets of skills in Social Media. The boring transparency of PR is just about as effective as the flashy lies of advertising in this new space – the gold lies somewhere in between.

* I speak the languages (ADish and PRese), my wife works in PR, I have worked at a PR company and major advertising agencies, I hang and actually like talking with PR and ad people, and more importantly I see huge value in both approaches to communications.

Update: Interesting post from Dave on DesignWalk about this topic, where he comments that marketing people should stay out of the blogosphere.

[tags] Radar DDB, David Jones, PR Works, Steve Wright, Jeremy Pepper, 3i, Tamera [/tags]

I was reading David Jones at PR Works interview about SocialRank’s really interesting process of establishing the top blog posts in certain categories and offering a blog compiled of the top stories. The algorithm seems very smart and contrasts more quantitative lists like the Ad Age Power 150 where the top bloggers tend to stay on top by inertia. This which often overlooks some great new or less-trafficked blogs (disclosure: I am currently listed at number 345 in the Ad Age Power 150).

So after reading about socialrank I immediately subscribed to the PR, New Media and Marketing sections. Unfortunately, SocialRank site suffers from my biggest RSS pet peeve: truncated feeds.

Like many others, I have more RSS feeds then I can read right now, but I am starting to unsubscribe to the feeds where I only get a tiny portion of the content in my reader forcing me to “click and wait” for every article that I find of interest. This keeps me from reading several articles, which otherwise I would. It also drags down my perception of the utility of the blog in question. I suspect that for many bloggers and media sites who cut off their feeds after the first couple of sentences, this is a tactic to maximize ad revenue (which I don’t begrudge at all), however these blogs offer me significantly less efficiency than full feeds, so they are usually the first ones I delete when my feed reader gets overburdened.

So to all the bloggers out there offering truncated feeds, just realize that you might be limiting your exposure with this strategy. I am going to call out a few of the marketing blogs that I really like, but will probably unsubscribe from due to truncated feeds: BuzzCanuck, iClickNation, AdRants (really guys I love your stuff, but hate the hassle).

Truncated feeds turn content into text ads by forcing clickthroughs, it really is pretty old-school thinking in my view. I also believe that in the long run a full feed increases the actual page views, since a full feed is more likely to get read and therefore more likely to get passed on to others via Word of mouth and social bookmarking, etc.

Perhaps there are other RSS junkies who disagree and prefer only an excerpt to keep their feed readers less cluttered? Or is it the bloggers fear of having your feed hijacked and re-posted elsewhere? Do your readers prefer to see the post on a web page rather than inside a reader?

I am not alone in this, nor is this a new issue:

Technology Evangelist

The Money Blogs

Portfolio.com

[tags] adrants, bloggers, buzzcanuck, feeds, iclicknation, prvoice, rss, socialrank[/tags]