Saturday, July 28, 2007
HC+T Update: July 2007
HC+T Update: July 2007
HC+T Update
July 2007
- I’m Back
- The Myth Of The Attention Crash
- Two New Webinars Coming Up
- Nokia Acquisition Signals Greater Convergence
- Banks Find Footholds in Second Life
- IBM First To Set Employee Guidelines For Virtual Worlds
- Earn Comments For Your Blogs The Organic Way
- Dialogue Based Journalism: Business Applications?
- GM’s Lutz Broadens The Conversation
- Site Of The month
- HC+T Update
- Boilerplate and subscription information
As usual, this issue represents mostly material I’ve written for my blog over the past month. You can find the blog at http://blog.holtz.com. And don’t forget, you should seriously consider switching from the email subscription to the RSS feed. Just add the following URL to your RSS news reader: http://blog.holtz.com/index.php/update/rss_2.0/.
1. I’m Back
The last Update appeared in February, an inexcusably long time to go without producing a bulletin. But, as many of you know, I had taken a full-time job with a new marketing company, continued my speaking schedule, and simply ran out of time. A couple months ago, I parted ways with the marketing company (amicably; it just wasn’t a good fit) and have returned to my private practice. It took a while to ramp things back up, but I now have time to resume production of the monthly Update.
I hope I still have a few readers left!
2. The Myth Of The Attention Crash
Years ago, before social media, I did a presentation at an IABC conference that addressed information overload. The blogosphere didn’t exist, there were none of today’s social networks, no Twitter/Jaiku/Pownce, no media sharing sites, no social bookmarking or ranking sites. Yet email and the web alone seemed to be causing a panic. People overwhelmed by the volume of content lamented the good old days of the gatekeeper who pointed us to what was important. My friend Roger D’Aprix worried that the web turned everybody into a publisher, confronting people with billions of pages that could be read while it still takes as long to read a page of text (Roger said) as it did during the Reformation.
I opened my presentation with my personal definition of information overload:
If you don’t care about it, it’s crap to you, even though it might be gold to me. The point is this: There really is no such thing as information overload, as long as the information is content that is useful to you. We can’t get enough information about the stuff we care about. That’s why celebrity addicts gobble up every word about Paris Hilton, political zealots consume every source of political gossip, and sports fantatics devour every sports site and magazine and radio/TV sportstalk show.
Internally, I argued, the trick to managing overload was for the organization to deliberately manage the culture so each communication channel was used to its best advantage. Typically, IT departments rolled out new communication technologies using the “Godspeed” approach. (Remember when email was first introduced to your company? IT got the system up and running, installed an email on your client, and then vanished saying only, “Godspeed.” You were left to your own devices to figure out how to use it as a business tool.) I argued that companies needed a “Message Mission Control” function—funded and staffed—to weave best communication practices into the way things are done in the organization. I remain convinced that bad messaging habits represent a far greater threat to productivity that non-work-related online activities.
Now, social media is raising the same old fears. As Steve Rubel put it:
We are reaching a point where the number of inputs we have as individuals is beginning to exceed what we are capable as humans of managing. The demands for our attention are becoming so great, and the problem so widespread, that it will cause people to crash and curtail these drains. Human attention does not obey Moore’s Law.
It seems that everything that goes around comes around—this is almost word-for-word the same fear expressed a decade ago. And I still don’t buy. I still believe that we can’t get enough information about the stuff we care about. As I noted earlier, we’ll simply get used to it, make necessary adjustments, apply new tools to help us filter the stuff we care about from everything else and everything will be just fine. (Those of you with teenagers know that they don’t fear an attention crash; my 18-year-old daughter has integrated it quite nicely into her very active life, thank you very much. This is a worry held only by those of us who are technology immigrants.)
Internally, such adjustments can be managed by organizations that have the will to address the situation. For society at large, it’s simply a matter of incremental adjustment. If you don’t believe me, look at how the younger generation have all but abandoned email, one of the great early online sources of overload. That’s evolution, and it’s happening before our very eyes if we only stop to notice it. The same incremental adjustments are inevitable in the world of social media.
3. Two New Webinars Coming Up
I have completely revamped Shel Holtz Webinars with a platform that accommodates a blend of text, audio, and video. The response has been great to the first three sessions, and I’m delighted to introduce two new upcoming sessions with lecturers other than myself.
First is Steve Crescenzo, who will present “From Corporate to Creative: How to Transform Your Corporate Communication.” You can get a full description of Steve’s five-week session on the home page of the new site at http://www.shelholtzwebinars.com. Steve’s session begins Monday, August 20.
Next up will be new-media guru Bryan Person with a Webinar titled, “Monitoring and Participating in Online Conversations,” which will take a hard look at blogger outreach and other techniques for leveraging online conversations as an element of your communication efforts.
I’m also planning to repeat the Webinar that just ended on HR Communications because Ragan wants to market it to a management (as opposed to communications) audience. Watch for details on that one, too.
All Webinars are priced at US $195 and take place entirely online. (These aren’t 60- or 90-minute teleseminars with PowerPoint on the web; they are completely asynchronous.) Watch a video overview of Webinars on the Webinar site.
4. Nokia Acquisition Signals Greater Convergence
I hadn’t even heard of Twango until yesterday, when the announcement came down that Nokia had acquired the multimedia file sharing site. Nokia apparently looked at about 75 companies before settling on the 10-person firm running out of the founder’s basement. The fact that the company is made up of former Microsoft employees who get Internet services had something to do with the decision.
More interesting is the reason Nokia went after such a company at all. According to the press release, “Nokia will be able to offer people an easy way to share multimedia content through their desktop and mobile devices.”
“The Twango acquisition is a concrete step towards our consumer Internet services vision of providing seamless access to information, entertainment, and social networks – at any time, anywhere, from any connected device, in any way that you choose. We have the most complete suite of connected multimedia experiences including music, navigation, games, and – with the Twango acquisition – photos, videos, and a variety of document types,” said Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Multimedia, Nokia. “When you combine a Nokia N-series multimedia computer that is always on, always connected, and always with you together with a rich media sharing destination like Twango, people will have exciting new ways to create and enjoy rich media experiences in real time.”
It’s another sign that the cell phone is becoming a more ubiquitous communication tool; companies not preparing content and services for the cell phone (as, for instance, the Mayo Clinic has) need to start strategizing.
(It’s also a sign that there are still phones out there other than the iPhone that can attract consumer attention.)
Twango is a nifty site. Unlike most media sharing sites, it allows for uploading of any kind of multimedia—audio, video, and photos. No login is necessary and you can upload your photos from a variety of device types (like, for instance, your cell phone). Embedding the content is as easy as it is with YouTube, but the same embed process works for all media types, not just video. There’s also a feature that lets you record a video with your webcam directly from the site and embed it in your blog or send it as an email attachment.
5. Banks Find Footholds in Second Life
The Los Angeles Times has joined the chorus of media outlets joyfully proclaiming “I told you so” as marketers begin abandoning Second Life. I don’t want to make too much of the article. After all, B.L. Ochman has already done a good job of articulating the points I would have made. I would only add that most of the businesses abandoning their efforts did them wrong to begin with. It makes no sense to me to proclaim Second Life—or any other channel, for that matter—a waste of time for marketers based on ill-considered approaches to entering a virtual world. I’m a fan of Coca-Cola’s approach, undertaken as a learning exercise and devoid of any island buying or edifice building.
Oh, I do have to comment on this gem from the LA Times piece:
“Another problem for some is that Second Life doesn’t have enough active residents…Even at peak times, only about 30,000 to 40,000 users are logged on, said Brian Haven, an analyst with Forrester Research.”
Uh huh. And what website, up to and including Amazon.com, wouldn’t kill to have 30,000 to 40,000 people visiting all at the same time?
Instead of dissecting what’s wrong with the Times piece, I find it a lot more interesting to look at the International Herald Tribune story about how banks, of all businesses, are experiencing some success in Second Life.
Banks, notoriously bad at establishing good relationships with customers, are finding that Second Life affords them the opportunity to do just that. For example, ABN AMRO opened a Young Professional Island to offer services to highly educated professionals in the 25-35 age range. Services include home buying assistance and job interview training.
The difference, when compared with conventional seminars, is that the avatars (online bodily representations, like Marty Dench) can be walked through the process, leading to a much deeper understanding than just looking at a piece of paper or listening to a slide show. Plus, the young professionals can easily do all this from home in the evening, notes Bas van Ulden, new business development manager at ABN AMRO.
In fact, it has been interesting watching the number of financial institutions—including venerable institutions like H&R Block—take a more strategic approach to Second Life than simply throwing up a building and proclaiming an in-world presence.
Those businesses that treat their Second Life experiences as learning opportunities—particularly how to be relevant with a population that resists the “army of old world meat-space corporations” (so dubbed by Second Life Herald writer Urezenas Sklar, the in-world identity of Toronto-based professor Peter Ludlow, quoted in the Times story)—rather than sales experiments will achieve much better outcomes.
That’s a particularly important concept as many observers agree that the World Wide Web itself will assume three-dimensional properties like those that characterize Second Life within the next five or 10 years. I’d rather make my mistakes now, when only 30,000 to 40,000 people can see them, than in 2012 when my screw-ups will be exposed to the entire global online population.
Wired magazine online published article that gets Second Life as wrong as everyone else, concluding thus:
“Companies say, ‘It’s an experiment’ — but what are they learning?’ Tobaccowala asks. ‘Basically, they’re learning how to create an avatar and walk around in Second Life.’ Which is fine if that’s what you want to do. Just don’t expect to sell a lot of Coke.”
That’s Rishad Tobaccowala, by the way, CEO of Denuo, a consulting arm of the global ad giant Publicis Groupe, who evidently doesn’t see the value of figuring it out now, either. Clients of his more forward-looking competitors stand a better chance of being prepared when the scales tip.
6. IBM First To Set Employee Guidelines For Virtual Worlds
As if that wasn’t enough Second Life information for you, here’s more:
IBM’s guidelines for employee bloggers are fairly well known among people who pay attention to such things. Now, IBM has become (as far as I know) the first company to establish a policy for employees who venture into Second Life and other virtual words.
According to an AP article, some critics are blasting the move, suggesting that avatars can’t be controlled by policies. For its part, IBM asserts that “having a code of conduct is akin to a corporate stamp of approval, encouraging workers to explore more than 100 worlds IBM collectively calls the ‘3D Internet.’”
IBM already has several islands in Second Life, many for strictly internal purposes. The company is also looking at building its own proprietary 3D world for training and other internal activities.
IBM’s rules fit the “common sense” mold, including…
- Don’t discuss intellectual property with unauthorized people.
- Don’t discriminate or harass.
- Be a good 3D Netizen.
- (Be) especially sensitive to the appropriateness of your avatar or persona’s appearance when you are meeting with IBM clients or conducting IBM business.
The guidelines state…
“Building a reputation of trust within a virtual world represents a commitment to be truthful and accountable with fellow digital citizens. Dramatically altering, splitting or abandoning your digital persona may be a violation of that trust. ... In the case of a digital persona used for IBM business purposes, it may violate your obligations to IBM.”
I wonder which company will be next to establish guidelines for employee involvement in virtual worlds?
7. Earn Comments For Your Blogs The Organic Way
When I worked in the pharmaceutical industry, I learned that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would send the equivalent of undercover agents to industry trade shows. These spies would hang around company booths listening for any sales or marketing rep to make a claim or statement that violated FDA guidelines. The FDA would promptly turn around and fine the offending company.
It is this fear that leads nearly anybody working for a pharma to proclaim, “We can’t blog.” The same is true in other heavily regulated industries like financial services. I disagree, but my argument centers around blogging on non-product issues. For example, I love the idea of a blog written by the top R&D executive so he can talk about drug research in general—new techniques, equipment, how to staff an R&D function, various stages of drug research and other topics that would make every college chemistry student an avid reader and potential recruit.
So I was a bit surprised to find that Glaxo SmithKline had launched a blog dedicated to its drug Alli. I was interested in watching the blog to see if a pharma could buck conventional wisdom and pull this off. Unfortunately, the blog may well be derailed by a sideshow that erupted when social media consultant Debbie Weil, who advised GSK on the alli blog, posted a message on her site and sent an email asking people she knew to visit and comment on the blog. (I don’t know whether I should be thankful or hurt that I didn’t get one of the emails.) The message on both ended with this note: “If you’re inspired or provoked, leave a comment on any entry. No need to say that you know me, of course.”
The post and email provoked a series of responses, none of them kind. These came from David Murray, Alan Jenkins, the Pharmalot blog and others. Neville Hobson sent a Twitter tweat: “Pimping for comments on client’s blog? What on earth was Debbie Weil thinking?”
Debbie reacted by pointing out the common practice of pitching posts via email; she calls it the blogging backchannel. She has a point. I’ve received many emails from people ranging from Dave Taylor to Andy Abramsom—both people whose blogs I read and whom I respect—asking me to read one post or another and give them a little link love if I think the post deserves it.
I’m not sure this is a parallel situation, though. Asking for link love for your own blog is one thing; asking for comments on a client’s blog is another. What’s more, I’m not sure of the value of comments from business colleagues when the goal should be to get comments from people who could use the drug, who already are using it, and subject matter experts. And finally, whether the use of the email backchannel is ethical or not, it has aroused a lot of disdain. Communicators working on client or employer blogs should consider the reaction of the blogosphere as a criteria, regardless of whether the reaction is justified. If the action is going to produce contemptuous responses, don’t do it.
The way to earn legitimate comments requires more work than a simple appeal to friends and colleagues, work I assume Debbie at least recommended to her client. The authors of the Alli blog should be reading related blogs—blogs about weight loss, dieting, and wellness. Where appropriate, they should be commenting. Not writing about Alli, just making relevant and salient comments about what they’ve read. That is, they should participate in the conversation. The signature appended to their posts should link to the Alli blog. If the comments are interesting, both the blogger and readers will click over to see who wrote the comment. If enough of these comments are interesting, the blogger will add the Alli blog to their blogroll, others will add the Alli feed to their subscriptions, and as the number of readers grows, the number of comments will grow with them.
Building a community around a blog is a slow, gradual process, particularly when it is obviously a commercially-motivated channel. It takes time for people to see there really is value to the blog and to get engaged. There’s no reason to rush these things, and even if the client starts wondering where all the comments are, it’s better to educate him than to solicit comments from anybody you can convince to leave one, particularly when your appeal for comments suggests that you don’t want the client to know these comments are coming from the consultant’s acquaintances. It’s just a more organic, transparent way to achieve the results you want.
Debbie is smart and experienced. Despite her defense of her use of the email backchannel, I’m sure she’ll rebound just fine.
8. Dialogue Based Journalism: Business Applications?
I reported on the Danish School of Journalism’s dialogue-based journalism experiment on yesterday’s FIR, but didn’t have time to list some of the results of the effort. The story appears over at the Online Journalism Review and it holds lessons not only for journalists and publishers, but professional communicators, too.
The class of 22 online journalism students set out to learn firsthand about the impact of online reporting that is open to reader comments. In order to attract a large enough audience to make the experiment worthwhile, the group set up a website dedicated to a local Danish soccer team and populated it with round-the-clock coverage in text, photos, audio, video, and multimedia interactives. “And every story element would be open for comments/dialogue,” according to Associate Professor Kristian Strobech, who penned the OJR article.
During the week the site was active, the class recorded 25,000 visits and 400 comments from enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and information-starved fans of the team—fans who, in most cases, knew more about the subject than the students producing the content. The experience produced some intriguing observations:
With the exception of a single thread that required some intervention, the comments were positive and caused no problems. They included brief notes on editorial content, additional information, identifying errors in reporting, suggestions for coverage and participation in discussions around specific articles and comments.
Encouraging comments resulted in new leads on stories. In one case, a reader wanted to know what a former team star thought of the team’s curent situation. A video team found the former player working as a chef in a restaurant, leading to a story they otherwise would not have pursued.
Video was most popular with the audience, based on the features that drew the most response. Uploading video clips of games to YouTube made it easy to embed the videos on the site. “We creeated a project account and used tagging to sort all the project videos,” Strobech writes. “This allowed the really eager user to subscribe to our channel at YouTube, as well as following the site.”
Live blogging of games was another popular feature—so popular that the constant refreshing of browsers by fans in order to get the latest updates brought the server down during each of the three games covered during the weeklong experiment.
I was particularly intrigued by the live blogging note. The updates simply reported the progress of the game without commentary or analysis. For those outside of radio or television coverage, it provided the only near-real-time report of the game. Organizations can take a lesson here and consider live blogging on corporate websites of annual meetings, press conferences, and other events as a far less expensive alternative to webcasts—one that seems to resonate with audiences. And if journalists are going to pursue live blogging as a tool of on-the-spot reporting, we should get used to our activities being live-blogged by others.
Organizations can also take a lesson from the idea of opening their content —- all of it -— to comment and conversation. Any item that appears on a corporate website can allow readers to contribute their own thoughts, which provides feedback to the company and can help identify issues and opportunities, just as feedback led the Danish online journalism students to an interview with a soccer player-turned-chef.
Next up for Strobech is a conference in October that presents the class with “an opportunity for five days of global Web dialogue on subjects such as corruption in sports, doping, and Olympic copyright.”
9. GM’s Lutz Broadens The Conversation
GM’s Fastlane blog continues to be a poster child for how to engage a community in the blogosphere in support of business goals. It has, over the last few years, hit all the right notes. Now, it appears to be getting even better.
One thing Fastlane didn’t do was make an effort to respond to the various questions and issues that emerge in the comments. If principal author Bob Lutz, GM’s Vice Chairman and top car guy, responded to comments, it was primarily as a follow-up post, and only to themes that emerged from multiple comments.
Now, Lutz is responding to comments—not in the comment threads themselves, but in short video clips. He announced the introduction of the videos in a recent post, and Global Communications Technology Director Christopher Barger posted he first of these on Friday. I particularly like the fact that Lutz doesn’t read his answers (just as nobody writes his posts for him); he refers to some notes, but he speaks candidly. At one point, he gets downright passionate about his belief that GM is unsurpassed in bringing concept cars to production.
Barger did one more thing I like as part of this effort: The videos themselves are being posted to YouTube, and Barger is simply using the YouTube embed code to bring the video into the Fastlane blog.
10. Site of the Month
The Jing Project
TechSmith makes two great software products, both of which I use a lot. SnagIt is the best screen and image capture program I’ve used (and I’ve tried a bunch of them), while Camtasia makes producing screencasts and videos from PowerPoint a breeze. The Jing Project taps into both of those notions with a combination of software and a website. The software resides on your screen at all times. When you’re ready to capture an image or video, you simply click it (or use the hotkey combination you’ve set in the software preferences), capture, then upload to the site, using an embed code to show the image or video on your blog or site. You’re not restricted to using the site, either; you can save them to your hard drive. For now, the entire Jing Project experience (in beta) is free.
11. HC+T update
- I’ll be talking social media to IRS communicators in Washington, D.C., in mid-August. Just before that, I’ll be spending some time with graduate students in the Newhouse School’s executive master’s program in communications management; that’s in Syracuse, New York.
- I have a couple consulting gigs with a major food-and-beverage company, both focused on internal communications. I’m also working with a huge company in Brazil, developing a digital media strategy for its external communication efforts.
- I’m chairing Ragan Communications’ “Corporate Communications and the Social Media Revolution” conference in Chicago, September 26-28. Information is at http://tinyurl.com/yugpes.
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