Canuckflack

It’s the return of Third Tuesday, folks. On Monday, May 5. A minority government brings uncertainty and unpredictability - even to your social calendar.

Facing off will be yours truly, Brandan Hodgson, and Ryan Anderson.

The point to be debated?

“…which social media tools are most useful and which are just code looking for a reason to be…”

Where?

Monday, May 5, 2008 at 6:00 pm

Clocktower Brew Pub
575 Bank Street (downstairs)
Ottawa , ON
613-233-7849

Now, I know Hodgson gets more belligerent the more he drinks, and Anderson is just a little fella, so the discussion should get more entertaining as the night gets older - and the more libations are quaffed.

And special thanks to Joe Thornley, the K’nex hub that keeps bringing us all together to talk all things social media.

Ofcom, the British media regulator, has just released hundreds of pages of qualitative and quantitative research into participation in social networks.

There’s the predictable division of social network members into cute little persona or caricatures, and then there’s a much more detailed breakdown of the impulses, activities and omissions of people participating in social networks.

I think it’s essential reading for anyone at all interested in the behaviour of youth online, as well as those interested in how regulators and ombudsmen view online activities.

Interestingly, Ofcom has also recorded a commentary on YouTube to accompany the release. Granted, it’s a one-sided commentary that evokes memories of Betacam video sent out to regional offices from corporate headquarters, but it does add a layer of interactivity and visual stimulation.

The qualitative research suggests five distinct groups of people who use social networking sites :

• Alpha Socialisers – mostly male, under 25s, who use sites in intense short bursts to flirt, meet new people and be entertained.
• Attention Seekers – mostly female, who crave attention and comments from others, often by posting photos and customising their profiles.
• Followers – males and females of all ages who join sites to keep up with what their peers are doing.
• Faithfuls – older males and females generally aged over 20, who typically use social networking sites to rekindle old friendships, often from school or university.
• Functionals – mostly older males who tend to be single-minded in using sites for a particular purpose.

The qualitative research also suggests three distinct groups of people who do not use social networking sites:

• Concerned about safety – often older people and parents concerned about safety online, in particular making personal details available online.
• Technically inexperienced – often people over 30 years old who lack confidence in using the internet and computers.
• Intellectual rejecters – often older teens and young adults who have no interest in social networking sites and see them as a waste of time.

Technorati Tags: Ofcom, Facebook, MySpace, youth online

There are four rules that dominate the quantity and quality of your blog content:

1: when in a rut, drive readership and SEO love by creating a numbered list;
2: the more disappointing your actual paying job, the more you will write and post. This does not mean your blog will be any better - just busier;
3: the closer the relationship between the subject of your blog and a day job you love, the better the content; and,
4: the busier your day job becomes, the less time and inclination you will find to blog.

I had an executive coach who told me that being an executive was a lot like spinning plates: you had to make sure your passel of plates continued spinning at the end of their poles, and that none hit the floor.

At the moment, I am filling two executive positions.

My office is running the danger of looking like a suburban banquet hall after a Greek wedding.

Well, I’ve finished work on it. A handy little guide for exploring the world of social media and building support for social media in a large organization.

I think the advice in this 23 page guide to secretly implementing social media in organizations could be equally useful for any government employee looking to try out new technologies - I’m pretty certain on that point, since I’m a government employee in real life.

You can find the guide at this link, and please feel free to share it with your friends, colleagues and bosses.

Here’s an excerpt, from the introduction:

How do you do it? How do you bring a spirit of innovation and experimentation to the communications shop of a large organization?

I’ve worked in a large organization – the government – for the last ten years. You can find bright, creative and resourceful people around every corner, in every department.

During the course of their careers, many of these people have thought of a move that could improve their work or their environment.

From experience, we all know that small changes in process or presentation are easily won. After all, it’s just another line on an approval sheet, or a tweak on the website.

Large organizations can also be convinced to launch a large-scale overhaul of their systems – whether it’s a supply chain, assembly process or online order system.

But it’s a real pain to get them to rethink their relationship with humans outside the security fence. After all, our customer service reps seem to be doing a good job, right? That sales force really does have a handle on the needs of the community, doesn’t it?

In speaking to hundreds of workers and managers for large organizations (government and private sector), I’ve been asked the same questions, over and over:

• How do you convince your boss to even experiment with social media?
• Doesn’t it mean a lot of extra work?
• Isn’t this sort of stuff blocked by our organizational policies?

This Secret Underground Guide to Social Media for Organizations is meant to help you answer some of those questions.

Technorati Tags: guide to social media, instruction, dummies guide, introduction, organizations, government

Here you are. Random sentences from a compilation of Lester Bangs‘ writing. All perfectly acceptable, if not preferable, as blog names.

• Bog of complications
• A Reasonable Guide to Horrible Noise
• Rock Gommorah
• Phony Kodachrome Nature Study
• The Courage of My Lunacy
• A Display of Marginally Political Unity
• Questions and Postulations and Fantasies
• Sneaking the odd little fingerlicking taste
• Smug post-hippie audience
• Aural blitzes off the phonograph
• Partyin’ with the freelance bigot
• Big money and technicolour jackets
• Home from school fakin flu
• Today I am a Pud
• Third Day of a Three Day Rock Festival
• Never had an AM hit single
• Not a big leg man

Technorati Tags: Lester Bangs, blog names, taxonomy

An amusing song - if a little racy and rude. My blog’s WELL bigger than yours, by AsaBailey, and reshot using YouTube clips.

via Punk Planning and Planner’s Delight

Following on Paul and Roger’s example, some link love meant to inspire at the same time:

“And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the Holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Amongst these dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold
Bring me my arrows of desire
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of Fire.
I will not cease from mental fight
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.”

Blake’s Jerusalem, in case you’re wondering. And more apropos than at first apparent.

And for the sensitive among you, I bear no favour or grudge towards adverbs, adjectives, nouns, verbs, definite articles or prepositions. You conjunctions, though, can get stuffed. You’re not as important as you think. 

You know, it’s a great feeling when the people you work with know exactly what to get you as a going-away present.

Like this custom t-shirt.

Yeah. That’s right. Just a little to the left. Harder. Ooooh.

I’ve been nominated for the Bloggers’ Choice Awards, for best marketing blog (talk about some stiff competition). That’s the button over in the sidebar, breaking my column width. Unfortunately, when I try to scale it down, it becomes illegible.

Vote for Canuckflack if you’d like.

As the social media monks, acolytes and proselytes run in ever tighter concentric circles chasing the tails of honesty, transparency and conversation, we need to pause and remember the greater world that surrounds our very small community.

Take, for example, the billions of people who have very little exposure to modern consumer society. While we obsess about the potential uptake for podcasts and blogs, there are villages considering buying washing detergent or headache powder for the first time.

“Unilever figures that 1.2 billion consumers will buy packaged goods for the first time by 2010 — most of them in the developing world. … Each week, 40,000 people in Asia use a washing machine for the first time.” (WSJ)

Even more significantly, sometimes a blog is simply a tool for a dispersed team to share news of life and death amongst themselves.

Technorati Tags: Digital and Social Media Syndrome, DSMS, Shutdown Day, Moratorium March

Hey folks. Know what I’ve noticed? Bloggers are most likely to post a critical word or a sarcastic riposte under two conditions:

• a big company with a global brand identity
• a person or company far, far away from your keyboard.

Either way, a blogger minimizes his/her chance of confrontation.

Sure, there are plenty of exceptions. There are some global brands who respond positively to criticism. And there are bloggers who concentrate on local subjects.

But sometimes, the biggest target is the easiest target. And if you swim with the pack, the chances of being singled out are much smaller.

Technorati Tags: bloggers are wimps, blog authority, criticism

Sorry folks, my hosting company went down for about 20 hours today. Everything should be fine now.
Not that you guys and gals on the feed even noticed.

:-)

Stuart Smalley V/O: I deserve good things. I am entitled to my share of happiness. I refuse to beat myself up. I am an attractive person. I am fun to be with.

Announcer: “Daily Affirmation with Stuart Smalley”. Stuart Smalley is a caring nurturer, a member of several 12-step programs, but not a licensed therapist.

[open on Stuart giving himself a pep talk in his full-length mirror ]

Stuart Smalley: I’m going to write a terrific blog post today! And I’m gonna help people! Because I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggonit, my 12 readers on Feedburner like me!

[turns to Live Writer window on his Lenovo laptop]

Hello, I’m Stuart Smalley! I’m still receiving some negative reaction from my post about Strumpette titled “There But For The Grace Of God Go I” and, I have to admit, it wasn’t my best writing … but that’s o-kay. I have to give myself permission to write a bad post every now and then. Especially if I spent the day sleeping until noon, then trolled gossip blogs and ate a box of Ding-Dongs.

There’s a lot of pressure in the blogosphere to write very well, especially among us self-help coaches. Before sitting down at my laptop, I lie on my parent’s sofa thinking, “What am I going to write about? The cat’s still asleep. I have nothing but good experiences at the mall. I haven’t eaten out in months. I haven’t even hurt myself accidentally. Everybody’s better than me. I’m not going to score any links or win any authority.”

All you other D-listers are not alone. Believe me, I know what it’s like, lying there, hard drive vibrating, thinking: “I’m a fraud. All I write are linkposts. Tomorrow, I’m going to be exposed for what I am, a big imposter. I just want to curl up and lay in bed all day and eat Fig Newtons.”

I am just a fool. I … I … don’t know what I’m doing. They’re gonna cancel the Adwords contract. My blog’s going to whither on the vine, my words are gonna go homeless. I’m gonna be penniless and twenty pounds overweight and no one will ever love me.

……

[majority of post simply adapted from the script for the Stuart Smalley interview with Michael Jordan. Stuart Smalley character originated by Al Franken on Saturday Night Live]

Technorati Tags: SNL, Stuart Smalley, blog criticism, blogger relations

1. Write a post criticising Mac users.
2. When making your argument, point to as many other blogs as possible.
3. Bury links in your text with offhand references like this and this.
4. Start your day off by checking Digg, techmeme, Reddit or Gawker for subjects to blog about. You know, instead of actually adding value.
5. Create a list of niche blogs. A list so big that you can’t possibly be monitoring it on a regular basis. Give it a nice graphic.
6. Write a gimmick post. Encourage your readers to copy your post (and code) on their blog.
7. Two words: Venn diagram.
8. Build your entire post out of quotes from four or more bloggers who have already covered the issue.
9. Write about using a Moleskine or implementing GTD.
10. Show how porn proved useful in an unusual situation.
11. Start a blog category of pictures of pets in compromising positions. Give them dialog bubbles in geek code.
12. Blog about unusual stuff. Really unusual stuff.
13. Use no less than seven Technorati tags.
14. Slag Strumpette. Or Scoble.
15. Pimp your posts to blogs with higher authority rankings.
16. Write a post about linkbaiting.

Technorati Tags: linkbait

” … “Whether you’re a music nerd or an art nerd, you pride yourself on being in a subculture that’s in the know,” says Andrew Paynter, who shoots for Flaunt, Tokion, and Fader, and who is curating a rock photography show for Noise Pop. “You’d spend night after night in small rooms just so you could tell your friends ‘I saw Subhumans in a tiny basement.’ That information isn’t privileged anymore. One person sees it and writes a blog … which creates a globalization of specific scenes without having to firsthand experience it.” (SF Weekly)

 Yeah - like this account of the Subhumans at the Knitting Factory in April 2006.

Technorati Tags: music blogs, rock snobs, Barry, music nerd, art nerd

The advertising community is still stunned that Fabio is a continuing draw for online audiences. Nationwide Insurance’s Super Bowl ad, which featured the long haired bohunk poling down the canals of Venice (or the Venetian hotel in Vegas), kept pulling viewers long after its first airing during the 2006 Super Bowl.

In true “B” star fashion, Fabio made sure his sponsors kept up on the info. Nationwide’s VP for advertising and brand management made that point in a New York Times piece about maintaining the buzz built from a Super Bowl placement:

“We got 1.8 million downloads on that one site. Fabio himself keeps me apprised of that.” (NYT)

Fabio’s life would be much easier if there was a widget he could install on that VP’s desktop.

Imagine what other information could be simply and efficiently distributed through widgets, rather than depending upon online media:

• Minutes Since You Last Saw William Shatner In Media
• Last Person to Misinterpret The Cluetrain Manifesto
  
• Average Episode Run of New Television Dramas Calculator
  
• Latest Coochie Flashed to Papparazzi
• Number of PPT Decks to Start With a Hugh Macleod Cartoon
  
• In/Out of Rehab Updater
• Dating/Not Dating/Slutting Around
• Friends/Not Friends with Paris
• Slept with Wilmer

Technorati Tags: Super Bowl, Fabio, Nationwide, widget

“Say Blogosphere Again” - from Coolestshop.com

From Steve Rubel’s post about his cheque from the Blogburst network:

“Clearly the way journalists and bloggers are being compensated is changing. However, everyone really should disclose the mechanics of how they are rewarded. Why should there be a double standard for the level of disclosure for journalists vs. bloggers when it comes to new models of compensation? We’re all part of the media fabric now. This should especially be revealed when anyone is being compensated based on traffic.

…But the point I want to make here is that no blogger - full-time pro or part-time paid - is exempt from disclosing how (not necessarily how much) they are paid and who is paying them.”

So - let’s say you’re the evangelist for a social media practice at a largish public relations agency. Your pay is directly related to your ability to demonstrate thought leadership in the subject, and your workload is divided between blogging, client service, client pitches, and conference presentations.

What proportion of your salary should you disclose, Steve?

This is an important question for bloggers and social media consultants as the world of blogging makes the transition from idealism to practical (read monetized) application.

The idea of disclosing all side interests, compensation deals or product placements that support a blog is a goal. As more and more bloggers develop viable careers from their work, can this be put into place with any level of accuracy?

Technorati Tags: Steve Rubel,  blogger compensation, pay per post, blogger ethics

There’s a tempest in a teapot brewing over at Blog Herald, and commented upon by Joe at ProPr.

My only thought at the moment? A lot of Amanda Chapel’s comments* across the blogosphere have nothing to do with debating a finer point, and hell of a lot to do with promoting and protecting the Strumpette brand.

And sometimes, when in this defensive mode, her comments come across as written by Y&R’s Phyllis Summers Abbott or Dr. Kimberly Shaw Mancini from Melrose Place.

*by comments, I mean her appearance on others’ blogs. I frequently enjoy and appreciate her point of view on Strumpette itself. It’s like a buffet, folks: sometimes you have to pass over the particularly unappetizing dishes and give the chef a break.

Technorati Tags: Strumpette, Amanda Chapel, ProPr, Chris Clarke

For Edelman, it makes perfect sense to establish and communicate the limits of your dealings with the blogosphere - especially if the stumbles of your high profile client programs are forever being highlighted online.

Richard Edelman has posted the general guidelines Edelman employees will follow when a conversation about their practice and their client develops online. They make perfect sense and show a balanced approach to managing an emerging business practice. But this paragraph struck me as unusual:

If there are questions posed about a given program, particularly about our approach, we will do our best to ensure that those most closely involved with the effort are commenting. It is a far better option to have those truly informed about our work join the conversation as and when appropriate. This is what happened on Microsoft with both Rick Murray, head of Me2Revolution, and Pete Pedersen, our relationship manager on the client, commenting in PRWeek.

[Cartoon-like headshake] Whaa? Wait. The head of your online practice thought the best place to respond to criticism about a blogger outreach program was … IN PRINT? IN A TRADE MAGAZINE? Not all the critics of the VISTA program are public relations pros - and not all PRs subscribe to PRWeek.

Which you have to be to read Murray’s comments - because the PRWeek piece is behind a subscriber firewall. (Unless you know to read Keith’s blog. Then there is a free link)

As for you bloggers who didn’t get a free laptop preloaded with Vista, here’s Rick’s POV:

“…Murray said, in part, the furor could have something to do with the limited scope of the campaign.

He added, “I think the reality is, when you handpick a small group of people out of 55 million bloggers, [many will] be less than happy with the solution.”

Yeah. Shut up you whiners.

Technorati Tags: Vista, Edelman, blogger relations

How do traditional print gossip columnists react to the accelerating competition from every apartment-bound celebrity hound with a laptop and a Blogger identity? A comment from Micheal Musto, the columnist for the Village Voice:

But how thrilled are you about all the gossip bloggers moving in on your turf and co-opting our brain cells? Don’t you want to reach for the trigger, hon?

Au contraire. They add energy and immediacy to reporting and have forced the print media to be way less antsy about sexuality issues. When the daily columnists scream, “But they’re inaccurate a lot,” you want to yell, “Hello, pot!”

Technorati Tags: Gossip, Musto

There’s a “Z List” meme working its way through the neighbourhood and, in the spirit of sharing, I want to point you to some new and possibly interesting blogs that I’ve taken a look at recently. In no particular order:

• Marketing Punk
• Social Media on the Fly
• Dave Forde
• Tell Ten Friends
• Plaintive Wail
• Tamera Kremer
• Get Shouty
• CrapHammer
• Radical Trust
• Community Guy
• Canadian Design Resource
• Flooring the Consumer
• Abstract Dynamics
• Billy Bragg’s Blog
• the fruits of imagination
• Communication Nation

In commenting on my post about big words, Ron Diorio used a fantastic analogy:

“The Gutnenberg reference always makes me laugh. It seems that blogs are more like Brownie cameras. They tarnsformed a complex technical process into a push button solution. Culturally the Brownie camera changed the way that we saw things and allowed for sharing amongst our circle of family and friends. This changed the dyamics of picture taking - masterpieces could be created without masters.”

That prompted me to pull together a little doodle about two varieties of blogger: the amateur/savant, and the professional entertainer/muckracker.

I know Steve’s seen the op/ed in the Wall Street Journal today. I was deliberating how to react, if at all, when it struck me: I’ve always judged the strength of an argument by the language used by the principal. Mr. Joseph Rago surely loves the looong word. The sophisticated word. The intellectual word. The “I’m the only guy in my graduating class not to throw away my rhetoric notebook on the last day of school” word.

Which is worse - that the Society of Professional Journalists is taking a good chunk of money from MarketWire - a for-profit service developed to influence reporters - to help set up a speakers bureau, or that the bureau seems to be targeting bloggers?

“… “I am pleased that Market Wire has decided to present SPJ’s Journalism Education Series to its customers, many of whom work in public and investor relations,” Tatum said. “It is vitally important for everyone who claims to be gathering information for the benefit of a well-informed public to know the difference between fact and fiction, between lies of omission and commission, between information that is genuinely helpful to the public and information that is solely self-serving” [said SPJ National President Christine Tatum, an assistant business editor at The Denver Post] (MarketWire Release)

Of course, I just made SPJ’s point for them by selectively quoting from the release. The bureau sounds like a worthwhile venture if it helps “professionals working in investor, media and public relations, [as well as] an array of community and civic groups” to improve their capacity to assess and analyze widely varying sources of information.

If it simply preaches “paper good, electronic bad” - then there’s not much point, is there? 

In another camp, the “Hot Type” columnist for the Chicago Reader noted that this was a deal that had to be structured carefully to pass the “smell test.”

A WELCOME RESPONSE. this is what I love about blogging. A direct response from the President of the SPJ:

“Hi — Thanks so much for drawing attention to what I consider an exciting initiative launched by the Society of Professional Journalists, one of the world’s oldest and largest journalism advocacy organizations. SPJ’s new Speakers Bureau and Journalism Education Series aren’t specifically targeted at bloggers. These projects are aimed at helping people of all backgrounds gather and deliver information accurately, ethically and with integrity — something we should all appreciate and support — and at helping people “improve their capacity to assess and analyze … varying sources of information.” Another noble cause.The Society’s instruction and instructors are outstanding and offer guidance of tremendous value. I want to ensure the Society and its speakers are compensated fairly for their time and effort. The revenue generated will help SPJ further champion its very important core missions, which include journalism ethics, the free flow of public information and professional development for journalists.

You won’t hear SPJ say, “Paper good, electronic bad.” Never. The Society has plenty of members who work in electronic media and maintain blogs (I’m among them). For more information about how to get involved in the Society’s tremendously good work, visit spj.org.

And while you’re visiting the site, take a look at how SPJ has ardently defended California blogger and freelance videographer Josh Wolf by paying more than half of the legal bills he has incurred while trying to protect his unaired video footage of a 2005 G8 Summit protest from a federal grand jury’s review. Wolf is sitting in a federal prison right now, and our members continue to work valiently to support him. http://www.spj.org/wpstory.asp?s=4  SPJ has put its time and money where its mouth is. I welcome calls, comments — and offers of volunteer support.Christine Tatum

National President, Society of Professional Journalists

Assistant Business Editor/Online Business News Editor, The Denver Post

Technorati Tags: SPJ, MarketWire, Speaker’s Bureau, media ethics

Here’s what we’ll be blogging on Christmas morning:

1. Ate Too Much
2. Christmas Sweaters
3. In-Laws. Can’t love ‘em, can’t leave ‘em.
4. BCS System
5. My Christmas in Second Life
6. WOM = Pimping, But Without The Sense of Style?
7. Umm, Peace to All … Republicans
8. Corporate Blogging is Ready to Break Out!
9. New iPod to replace the broken iPod
10. Windows Vista Sucks
11. World Hunger
12. That Rat Bastard at that Store in the Mall

Like Chuck Woolery, the blog took a break for “two and two” - two days and two hours.

Sorry about dropping out. My kind host had his CPU melt down - like a NorthEastern hipster blogger stuck in a small New Mexico town with no Starbucks and no broadband.

Rest assured, I’m back now.