Tuesday, November 27, 2007
HC+T Update: November 2007
HC+T Update, November 2007
HC+T Update
November 2007
1) A Proposal for Raising the Profile of Ethical PR
2) Who Should “Own” Social Media?
3) Jeremy Burton Is My New Hero
4) Dell Launches Investor Relations Blog
5) Northwestern Mutual Launches Internal Social Media
6) Announcing the “Stop Blocking” Campaign
7) Dark Blogs: A Bad Idea for Crisis Communications
8) The Flaws in Back-of-the-Envelope Productivity Calculations
9) Why Hasn’t Audio Podcasting Gone Mainstream?
10) Sites Of The month
11) HC+T Update
12) Boilerplate and subscription information
I figured it was time to produce a new “HC+T Update” when I noticed my last issue came out in August. AUGUST! Time certainly flies!
As usual, this issue represents mostly material I’ve written for my blog since the last issue. 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. A proposal for raising the profile of ethical PR
The latest controversy over deceptive and unethical PR practices doesn’t even involve a public relations agency. No, this time Dan Ackerman Greenberg is in the hot seat after posting the steps he and his company, The Commotion Group (which describes itself as “New Media and Marketing and Consulting”) take to improve the chances a YouTube video will go viral. These include having staff members post heated comments to the videos they’re promoting and using misleading titles to draw viewers to the video.
The fact that The Commotion Group doesn’t tout itself as a PR firm won’t help offset the damage the firm’s revelations has caused. Once again, the behaviors of those who seem untroubled by deceptive tactics are tainting everybody working on similar projects regardless of the steps they have taken to ensure they are behaving ethically.
Sadly, this will continue to be the case. Those too lazy to employ ethical techniques, those who delight in misleading consumers, and those who will do anything for a buck will always be with us. The question, then, is this: How do the rest of us differentiate ourselves and deflect the bad rap PR and marketing are getting thanks to the actions of the bottom-feeders?
The idea of a code of ethics has surfaced several times, but it’s a non-starter. The codes of ethics already in place are having no significant impact; PRSA goes so far as to insist there is no enforcement behind its code. A code without teeth is hollow, since only those inclined to behave ethically in the first place will abide by it while others may claim to embrace it while simultaneously violating it since they will suffer no consequences for doing so.
I’ve been toying with a possible solution that I’m ready to propose. This idea has been percolating in my head for a while and I can’t find a downside.
Companies or agencies engaged in a PR or marketing effort should create a page that outlines the elements of the assignment. The page would include the goal, objectives, strategies and tactics. Objectives should include any metrics the project is designed to achieve. Each tactic would include the specifics about approaches taken. For example, if blogger outreach is one tactic, the outline would cover the steps taken, from how bloggers are identified to how they are contacted.
Call it disclosure. Call in transparency. It would end speculation about how a company or agency goes about its communications. Those who adopt the practice should stand apart from the rest of the herd, assuming they are honest and forthright in their reporting. If enough organizations adopt this idea, those who do not share their project plans may be perceived as having something to hide. If you’re looking for a template for the contents of such a page, look no further than the evaluation form for IABC Gold Quill judging. If you can answer all of these questions on your project pages, you’ll be in good shape. (The link is to a PDF of the form.)
It seems to me an ideal way to draw a line between ethical and unethical practitioners.
For those who would shy away from such transparency, it’s an idea you’d best get used to. After all, deceptive project plans are being revealed all the time. Why not expose your approaches to the light of day? It could wind up being the best PR you could possibly produce for your agency. And for those who see this is extra unbillable work, look at the bright side: Your IABC or PRSA award competition entries will already be completed.
2. Who Should Own Social Media?
Mitch Joel’s item on “ownership” of social media (on his blog, “Six Pixels of Separation”) has generated some interesting comments. Joel suggests digital marketing agencies should “own” organizations’ social media efforts:
“I think it’s Digital Marketing agencies who need to step up and own the Social Media marketing landscape. Agencies who are primed in the interactive marketing space start off with a core understanding of how people connect online, and how different users interact within online communities. Traditional advertising firms constantly struggle with how to add interactive into the mix. The fact that this still happens in the Marketing world makes me squirm. Interactive is still an after-thought to many agencies. Public Relations firms have the communications and conversations component down, but (usually) lack in the Web development department in terms of producing and marketing the initiative.”
The ensuing comments (including several replies from Mitch) raise a variety of issues. Mitch points out, for example, that he’s not talking about how a company department uses social media to achieve its goals, but rather who in the organization will make decisions about platforms, policies, and other tactical aspects of social media.
Even with this explanation, I’m troubled by the “ownership” issue. Few of the clients with whom I’ve worked engage a digital marketing agency. They wouldn’t be inclined to start working with one just so they can abdicate ownership of their social media activities to an outside organization. Even those organizations that have turned “ownership” over to a PR, marketing, advertising or some other kind of vendor have, I think, made a mistake. Nobody can develop an organization’s approach to social media better than the people inside the organization. Vendors can provide tremendous, invaluable advice, but ultimately, it’s the company that must be accountable for its own participation in the conversation.
Intranets provide a nice analogy: Who should own the company’s intranet? In many organizations, it’s the IT department. In others, it’s Employee Communications. A smattering of other departments own the intranet in some other companies. But, according to research conducted a few years back by Melcrum, the most effective intranets were those governed by a cross-functional team…that is, the company owned the intranet with representatives from across the spectrum of content owners guiding its evolution.
A cross-functional social media team isn’t a bad idea for companies. I know of one large organization in which Knowledge Management has assumed ownership of social media. But this has only delayed the use of social media tools by departments who have other goals in mind (e.g., project management, communication). In the cross-functdional model, task forces can be assigned specific work. For example, the IT task force can do the homework on appropriate platforms, then report back to the team for a decision made in the best interests of the organization. That’s a lot better than a decision that satisfies the MBOs of a single department.
Ultimately, though, how a company engages in social media should be part of something larger: how a company manages its reputation. I fully support the idea of a Chief Reputation Officer, an idea first put forward (as far as I know) by Charles Fombrun in his excellent book, ”Reputation: Realizing Value from the Corporate Image.” Here’s how Fombrun explains it:
Much as companies appoint a chief financial officer to safeguard financial capital, a chief operating officer to monitor operations, and a chief information officer to control and manipulate corporate databases, so might they benefit from appointing a chief reputation officer (CRO) to watch over the company’s intangible assets. As PR consultant Alan Towers suggests:
“The CRO’s tactical responsibilities would include oversight of pricing, advertising, quality, environmental compliance, investor relations, public affairs, corporate contributions, and employee, customer and media relations Rather than litterally do each of these jobs, the CRO would act as a corporate guide, working with specialists in each area to help them see the reputation consequences of their decisions. If necessary, the CRO could impose an opinion…”
With or without the title, sucha position would help to signal the importance and make explicit the hidden value of the company’s reputation. It would also encourage other managers to more systematically relate knowledge drawn from brand marketing, public relations organizational theory and strategic management.
The book was written in 1996, long before social media—or the Internet at all—had an impact on reputation. It’s still a sound idea and easy enough to drop social media into the list of the CRO’s tactical responsibilities.
With or without a CRO, though, the accountability for a company’s social media belongs inside the organization.
3. Jeremy Burton Is My New Hero
Jeremy Burton is my new hero. The guy deserves a medal. At least some recognition.
Burton is CEO of Serena Software, a 800-employee company not too far from here in San Mateo, California. Serena provides a platform that lets businesses create application mashups without writing code or relying on IT. On November 2, Serena issued press release introducing “Facebook Fridays, which encourages employees to find fun and personal connections in the workplace. Each Friday, employees are granted one hour of personal time to spend on their Facebook profiles and connect with co-workers, customers, family and friends.”
The press release is at:
http://www.serena.com/company/news/pr/sPR_11022007.html
I commented on this enlighted approach over on the Stop Blocking blog, which drew a response from Serena CorpComm VP Kyle Arteaga directing me to an article Burton wrote for ZDNet Asia. In it, he makes the case for encouraging employee interaction on social networks instead of blocking them. The article is at:
http://www.zdnetasia.com/insight/internet/0,39044877,62034135,00.htm
For most people, the human drive to connect and share is stronger than the duty to spend every possible moment “being productive”. No matter what, people will find ways to socialize and share during work hours. It might be best to treat this like sex education: If your employees are going to “do it” anyway, why not encourage them to channel their social-media impulses in smart, safe ways that can potentially help your business?
Burton provides concrete examples of how employees can help the business through their social networking activities and suggests that even though some problems are likely to arise, they’re minor compared to the benefits to the company.
I interviewed Burton for a “For Immediate Release” interview segment, which you can listen to here:
In the meantime, read this article. Print it out and pass it along. Email the link to people. If we can spread the smarts of enlightened people like this, maybe we can turn the tide on the current trend of blocking access, building employee resentment, curtailing trust and squashing employee engagement.
4. Dell Launches Investor Relations Blog
Dell Inc. embraced social media in a big way with the launch of Direct2Dell, its customer focused blog. Greeted originally with catcalls by many observers, the blog—under the guidance of Lionel Menchaca and other members of Dell’s communications and customer service team—has been a cornerstone in the computer maker’s reputational turnaround success story. Direct2Dell was followed by the Dell Idea Storm, introducing elements of co-creation to the social media mix.
Now Dell takes another bold step—one sure to raise eyebrows—with the introduction just minutes ago of DellShares, a blog focused on investor relations authored by Lynn Tyson, Dell’s IR veep.
Neville and I had the privilege of interviewing Tyson for a For Immediate Release interview, which is now available for your listening pleasure (in fact, it’s the post just below this one on this blog). You can listen to the interview here:
Few companies have employed social media for investor relations purposes, hindered mainly by qualms about onerous regulations that govern IR activities. But Dell’s experience with Direct2Dell has quieted any concerns, even among the company’s lawyers, according to Tyson, who tossed off a great quote in the interview:
People have learned that there is little downside to having conversations.
The blog was part of a broader initiative for implementing a “21st Century IR Plan,” Tyson says. The plan—and the blog—are based on two key principles. First is the democratization of information; second is the ubiquity of information. Tyson suggests that making information available on a blog where people can find it and having a conversation about that information is nothing different from her department’s normal day-to-day activities:
“The ability for an investor relations department to execute this and do it well quite frankly is predicated on how well they do their jobs every day. And if there’s confidence in their ability to exercise sound situational judgement over the phone or over emails or in one-on-one meetings with investors or group meetings with investors or drafting press releases, then there should be that same level of confidence by the company in their ability to have a dialogue over the Internet.”
I would cast my vote in a heartbeat for Tyson to serve as a key spokesperson for the adoption of social media in business. Her pointed statements—that fears don’t come to fruition and having a conversation online is no different than having one anywhere else (in terms of your ability to reap value and avoid problems)—stand in stark contrast to the naysayers who insist that closely controlled, one-way, top-down communication should continue to characterize corporate interaction with constituent audiences. These forces fear dire consequences of business adoption of social media. Dell has had the opposite experience, a practical, real-world case study of how engaging in conversation serves the company’s goals.
Couple this with the Northwestern Mutual case study from Forrester (in which intranet blogging boosted productivity) and other success stories. Weigh them against the few tales in which the adoption of a social media strategy has backfired on a company. It’s clear that social media will play a critical part in the fortunes of any company planning to do business in the new-media environment.
DellShares opens with an introductory welcome post. Tyson plans to coordinate posts with key investor events (earnings announcements, conference calls, and the like) and to use it to discuss issues with shareholders large and small. I’ll be watching. Hell, I may buy a few shares just so I can participate as a genuine member of the investing audience.
5. Northwestern Mutual Launches Internal Social Media
Jeremy Burton (referenced above) is one of my heroes. G. Oliver Young is fast becoming another one. Every time this Forrester analyst puts out a paper, it provides me with fodder to support my arguments supporting social media in the enterprise.
The latest, a case study detailing the efforts by financial services company Northwestern Mutual to take advantage of social media on its intranet, is particularly important because the company under the microscope isn’t high-tech. In fact, insurance companies are traditionally among the most conservative organizations when it comes to embracing new media.
But Norwestern Mutual jumped into social media with both feet, first invetigating the potential in 2005 and then deploying both employee blogs and RSS.
The company’s blogging effort was designed to achieve three specific goals:
- Efficient and accurate communication from management to employees
- A feedback loop from employees to management.
- Inter-employee communication.
The initiative was pushed by Northwestern Mutual’s Assistant Director of Corporate Relations, Andrea Austin, and taken up by the cross-functional Public Affairs Committee. Several concerns needed to be overcome, though, including fears that internal blogging would sap employee productivity (where have we heard that one before?), issues raised by Human Resources, and security concerns, among others.
Once these were addressed, the blogging platform—Mutualblog—was rolled out. It became evident quickly, though, that RSS would be required to make blogging practical. NewsGator provided RSS functionality for the company.
While the bloging initiative was designed to improve the culture of openness and honesty, the biggest benefits were seen in project and team management. About 70% of the active blogs at Northwestern Mutual focus on project management.
Nobody doubts that the blogging and RSS effort has produced business value but, not surprisingly, it isn’t easy to measure. Still, there is strong evidence that communication has improved and team and individual productivity have increased. Contrary to the concerns expressed by some that employee blogging will drain productivity, Northwestern Mutual’s experiment has shown that it helps address information overload. According to the case study:
“Blogging has provided a partial solution to the (information overload) problem, allowing employees —- especially the geographically distributed field force —- to engage new content at their leisure, cutting down on conference calls, meetings, and email overload. The firm has even higher hopes for the recently launched RSS solution, which it expects to help cut down information overload as opt-in emails, newsletters, and corporate portal content transition into the RSS channel.”
Next up for Northwestern mutual are efforts to drive greater employee adoption of blogs, bringing wikis and podcasting into the mix, and applying the social media efforts that have worked behind the firewall onto the World Wide Web for external communciation purposes.
The full study goes into considerable detail on Northwestern Mutual’s social media efforts. It costs $279, which is pretty damn cheap for any communicator looking for evidence to convince the powers that be that the naysayers are wrong and, when executed strategically, social media on the intranet produces real bottom-line business value.
6. Annoucing the “Stop Blocking” Campaign
I have never been a fan of the business practice of blocking employee access to online content (as you know if you read this blog). I believe the practice kills trust and prevents employee engagement. Prospective employees see it as a big sign that says, “Don’t work here.” The issues that lead companies to block access are better addressed by strong supervision and effective management instead of technical restrictions. Much of the content that is blocked is valuable from a business standpoint; that value just hasn’t been recognized by those who make the kneejerk decision to block. The arguments that support blocking are based on flawed calculations and distorted reporting. And the investment required to block access can better be invested in anything from customer service to corporate social responsibility initiatives.
I have finally decided to do more than just gripe about blocking practices on my blog and podcast. Effective today, I have launched a blog and wiki as the foundation of a campaign to educate the business world about the arguments against wholesale blocking of online content. These arguments don’t get a lot of publicity; they’re not as sensational as “studies” from organizations that benefit from the fear they produce with headlines like “$5 billion in lost productivity attributed to Facebook.” It is my hope that the “Stop Blocking” campaign will serve as a resource to those who want to make a business case supporting open access.
The blog—which serves as the campaign home page—will report on goings-on in the blocking realm. The wiki, though, is the heart of the effort, where anyone interested in participating can contribute arguments, evidence, case studies, research, links to articles, anything that helps make the case that the benefits of open access far outweigh the risks, and that there are better ways to address the prospect of employees who abuse the privilege. In order to manage wiki spam, I’ve set up the MediaWiki to require you to register in order to contribute or edit content. I encourage you to take the minute or so required to create an account so you can become part of the movement.
There’s also a petition associated with the campaign. Your signature is appreciated. I won’t link to it here in the hopes that you’ll visit the campaign site in order to find it.
I’m also interested in anyone who can produce better graphics for the badges than I have (I’m no designer), as well as WordPress and MediaWiki talent who can improve the design and functionality of these tools.
And, of course, since this is a new site, I’d be grateful for any reports of anything that doesn’t work right. (It’s my very first experience using the MediaWiki platform.)
So please visit the site, contribute to the wiki, display one of the badges (linking to the Stop Blocking campaign) on your blog, and do what you can to take advantage of social media and word-of-mouth to spread the Stop Blocking message that the mainstream media has been ignoring. I am grateful for your support and anxious to see where this goes.
The site is at:
http://www.stopblocking.org
7. Dark Blogs: A Bad Idea for Crisis Communications
More and more, I hear communicators counsel their organizations and clients to maintain a “dark blog” in the wings, ready to be activated in the event of a crisis. Whether this is actually a good idea falls into that “it depends” category.
Blogging software, stripped of the elements that make it a blog (like comments and trackbacks), can be used to provide rapid updates as the crisis progresses through its various stages. If that’s the intent of a dark blog, fine.
If, however, the dark blog is designed to provide a genuine, authentic voice engaged in conversation about the crisis, this is an awful idea. The blog will have absolutely no credibility. It will have no established voice. No community will have formed around it.
Establishing a corporate blog before a crisis, on the other hand, allows an organization to build community along with some banked goodwill and trust —- assuming the blog is done right in the first place. That storehouse of goodwill and trust can be used in a crisis with an audience already inclined to believe what the corporate blogger says and, to some extent, to support the organization in its trying time.
Consider the minor crisis Southwest Airlines experienced when the ejection of a scantily-clad passenger from a flight became public. Imagine starting a blog in order to engage in a dialogue with the customer base and the flying public over the issue.
Instead, Southwest Airlines President Colleen Barrett used the existing “Nuts About Southwest” blog—with its regular core group of readers and its established credibility—to issue an apology:
We always want to apologize if we offend any of our Customers, and we also support our Employees abilities to make decisions. We are apologizing to Kyla, in typical Southwest style, and I hope you will click here to read about it.
The post was greeted with hundreds of comments. While the comments represented a mix of opinions, they were mostly courteous and well-thought-out, the way people talk when they are engaged in a conversation with someone they know. The ability to engage directly with those whose opinions are strongest can defuse a lot of the hostility some people may feel. The fact that they can do so on a company blog makes people feel like their opinions matter to the company. And a number of the comments do applaud Barrett for the apology, like this one:
“While I think this apology should have come much earlier than it did, I’m glad to see that SWA has apologized for it’s error, and publicly admitted to the mistake.
Good job!”
It does make sense to include social media—and, at this stage, blogs in particular—in your crisis communication planning. If you’re looking for an argument to support introducing a corporate blog, the benefits of two-way communication with critical audiences during a crisis could help you sell the idea. But don’t fall prey to the suggestion that launching a blog at the time of a crisis is a sound strategy.
8. The Flaws in Back-of-the-Envelope Productivity Calculations
Upon returning to Apple in 1997 after years of exile (or so the story goes), Steve Jobs observed that employees were hunkering down in their offices. Wanting a more free-flowing exchange of knowledge, Jobs ordered urns of coffee and boxes of donuts delivered to Apple’s buildings on Fridays. Employees emerged from their offices to enjoy the caffeine and sugar but, while there, they began talking to other employees with whom they normally wouldn’t exchange a word. The notion is similar to what one CEO told me a few years back: “If you want to know what’s going on in this company, step outside and hang out with the smokers.”
No matter how many organizations struggle to resist it, work is social. (The very definition of the word organization is “a group of people who work together” or “a group of people with one or more shared goals.” Note the emphasis on “a group of people.” In an organization (as anywhere else) knowledge transfers from person to person, not machine to person. Computer networks are most valuable when they facilitate that exchange. And social networks have emerged as the best set of tools for facilitating the person-to-person exchange of knowledge. Why wouldn’t a company want to take advantage of that?
Admitting that he is a “wet blanket,” internal communications guru Roger D’Aprix has written one of his “Inside Out” columns for the “Ragan Report” offering employee productivity as a key reason for companies to be wary of enterprise social media. D’Aprix is one of the sharpest minds in the internal communications business; in fact, his early thinking on employee communications in the 1960s and 70s has shaped many of the principles employed today. His book, ”Communicating for Change,” should be required reading for business leaders and communicators.
His take on internal social media, however, deserves some scrutiny. D’Aprix begins by reminding us that workers already face an ever-worsening information overload problem:
“To get some idea of the overload problem’s severity, consider that The Henley College in England has just conducted a study which shows European managers are spending two hours a day dealing with e-mails. The study’s authors calculate that that adds up to a staggering 10 years of a worker’s life! Of that number three and a half years are seen as a complete waste of time since 32 percent of the messages are deemed irrelevant. The cause (which to be fair is obviously out of our control as communication professionals) is that each e-mail message typically spawns four to six additional ones in the user’s inbox.”
The problem with lumping social media into the message meltdown issue is that the messages contributing to the overload are pushed at employees. Employees don’t ask for most email they get. But employees will not read blogs, listen to podcasts, or participate in social networks they don’t find valuable; these are all channels that employees pull based on interest and need.
“Consider this. In a company of 15,000 employees if just 1 percent of the work force succumbs to the invitation to begin a personal blog, the productivity and cost consequences are huge.”
D’Aprix applies the same math to employee blogging that organizations like Websense and Challenger, Gray & Christmas use when making the case for blocking employee access to external content: 1,500 minutes equals 25 hours of productivity at $100 per hour, totaling $2,500 in production costs. The time invested by the 30% of the workforce that reads one blog for five minutes comes to 22,500 minutes, totaling 375 hours of reading time per post, or $37,500 per blog in lost productivity. “Now multiply that number by the number of blogs that attract large readerships.” It’s the same kind of calculation that led to the belief that Facebook is costing Australian businesses $5 billion in lost productivity.
As I have noted before, such calculations fly in the face of evidence that worker productivity in the U.S. is on the rise and is the best in the world. D’Aprix admits that his calculations don’t account for a number of factors:
“Not everyone can be productive every minute of the day. The actual productivity per worker is probably closer to 60 percent of his or her working day. So lost productivity is inevitable anyway.”
“Not every worker represents $100 an hour in company costs.”
“Some of those 150 blogs could well be part of a valuable information exchange that might even lead to a productivity gain.”
Despite these factors, however, D’Aprix remains unconvinced:
But who can tell which ones are valuable and which ones are a waste of time without inspecting them? So the productivity losses still add up. The pro-bloggers will hate it, but maybe we need some good gate keeping to filter out the inevitable junk.
D’Aprix misses some critical points in his call to “give careful thought before you succumb to the hype and recommend any activity that adds to an already maddening overload problem.” At the risk of repeating myself (since this is a hot-button issue for me), let’s undertake a quick review:
- Employees who blog on the intranet do so primarily about work. They are codifying their thoughts and efforts, often as a means of creating a record for their own reference.
- Employees will read blogs they find worthwhile and ignore those they don’t. Ditto podcasts. Ditto social network profiles and groups.
- Companies that implement RSS make it easier for employees to manage most of the content they consume, helping them focus their attention on what’s important and ignore what’s not. Using an RSS news reader, employees can subscribe to all manner of content, from policy updates posted to the intranet to company news releases to internal blogs to external web sites, all of which can be scanned and consumed in one compact place.
Even if an internal blog doesn’t provide immediate benefit to a reader, it does create knowledge touch points in the organization that never would have existed before. It may be two years before Mary realizes that the author of the internal blog she’s been reading has the skills required to kick-start a stalled project.
Even though Tim may not benefit directly by reading Jennifer’s internal blog, he could leave a comment to a post that helps Jennifer (or any of her other readers) solve a problem or do their jobs better.
Trusting employees with internal blogging increases job satisfaction, trust, and engagement. It also becomes a recruiting tool.
Most employees will not risk their jobs to do anything non-work-related, whether that’s blogging, web surfing, or working crossword puzzles. The measure of productivity is whether work is getting done, not the minutes spent on non-work activities. Consider how much work you do when you’re not in the office (at home, on the road, on vacation). Where does that factor into these calculations?
Employee blogs also create a permanent record of employee knowledge that remains in the organization after they leave.
Clearly communicated and enforced policies can address most of the problems internal blogging might create. As for employees who are bound and determined to waste time, they’ll waste time with or without computers and should be managed by exception.
Ultimately, though—as the leaders of companies like Siemens USA have suggested—anything that gets employees to share knowledge with one another is a good thing; the benefits far outweigh the risks. Instead of back-of-the-envelope calculations, I’d like to see real evidence that internal blogging is costing a company in terms of sales, innovation, product (or service) introduction, time-to-market, the ability to attract and retain employees, market share or any of the other factors that keep executives awake at night. That’s evidence I’m just not seeing. Instead, I have found only reports of how these networks have increased organizational nimbleness and competitiveness.
The sooner we can move beyond the superficial objections to internal social media, the sooner organizations can begin reaping the benefits of a culture in which knowledge flows freely from employee to employee.
9. Why Hasn’t Audio Podcasting Gone Mainstream?
I’ve had this post in mind for a couple months now. I’ve put it off due in part to my travel schedule and in part because I wanted to chew on it a bit more. It’s certainly not a new topic; in fact, it’s well-worn territory:
Why hasn’t audio podcasting become mainstream?
I utterly reject the argument posited by some very smart people that the explosion of online video is to blame. With respect to those who have made this case, I have to shake my head in disbelief. If the popularity of video could stifle the growth of audio, why didn’t the introduction of television kill radio? There certainly were enough pundits in the 1940s who believed TV spelled doom for radio, but in fact radio thrived and grew to become more profitable than ever. It did so by adapting based on its remaining strengths.
The appeal of watching Don Imus (before his fall from grace) on MSNBC. What was visually appealing about watching a guy sit behind a desk with studio monitors over his ears talking into a microphone? Radio is much better at talk and music than TV is. And when people couldn’t focus 100% of their attention on a video screen, radio entertained them while they kept their eyes elsewhere (like the road, for instance; people who read while they drive scare the shit out of me).
Some also suggest that the incursion of traditional radio into the audio podcasting space is detrimental. But look at the most viewed videos on YouTube. How much there is original content? The list I’m looking at includes Saturday Night Live clips, scenes from soccer games, Japanese soap operas and other appropriated content.
Another point in favor of audio podcasting comes from Rob Walch, host of “Podcast 411,” in an email exchange we had on the subject:
“It is much easier to compete against a Radio station - there is not much difference in Audio quality when you listen on your iPod between a “Professional” recording and one done by us indie podcasters.”
Personally, I find most of the video podcasts to be worthless as video; I’d much rather listen to them. What’s the appeal of watching some guy talk into his webcam? Why should I have to watch that? If you’re going to produce something as video, for God’s sake please make it visually compelling. That’s what I love about shows like Geek Brief TV and Rocketboom: There’s something to actually look at.
And let’s not forget that video requires your complete attention. Audio is the only medium to which we can pay attention while we’re doing something else.
So if Internet video’s phenomenonal rise isn’t to blaim for the stagnation in podcasting’s growth, what is? The answer, I believe, is infrastructure. There is not a simple infrastructure common across the podcasting world that makes it drop-dead easy to download podcasts and transfer them to a portable device.
Offloading video isn’t that big an issue. Most people watch online videos (whether they’re podcasts or not) on their computers. The appeal of podcasting is the ability to listen while you’re walking the dog, mowing the lawn, or (as I am right now) sitting on another tedious goddam cross-country flight.
How you subscribe is not standardized. How podcatchers and MP3 devices work is not standardized. While most people who read this blog have probably figured out how to deal with podcasts and RSS feeds and the like, my mom would be completely lost. I guarantee you she would listen to FIR if she could; she reads my books, after all, even though she has no clue what they’re talking about. But books all work alike. Bookstores work alike.
I’m not expecting a resolution to this situation any time soon because there is no profit-motivated industry that would benefit through the cooperative development of a consistent, standardized infrastructure. In the book ”The Death of Competition,” which I read several years ago, author James F. Moore talks about “coopetition,” competing companies working together to create an ecosystem that supports the growth of all players. Moore points to the videogame industry as an example. Companies like Ninentendo, SEGA, and Atari joined forces to create the gaming infrastructure. No, an Atari game wouldn’t play in a Nintendo device, but the distribution channels and other aspects of the infrastructure needed to exist before the various platforms could prosper.
There is no similar profit-motivated ecosystem in podcasting, and I don’t believe one is on the horizon. So podcasting’s growth will continue to be incremental—volunteers take more time to promote an infrastructure than businesses—but continue to grow it will.
10. Sites of the Month
At the recommendation of my friend Pete Shinbach, I’ve been playing with Jott, a new online service currently in public beta. So far, I love this service both for its simplicity and the fact that it meets a real need.
Once you have an account, which synchs with your cell phone number, you set up lists of people with whom you want to communicate. Let’s say you work for a department that meets each Tuesday at 8 a.m., but you’re stuck in traffic. Call Jott and record a message saying, “I’m late, but start the meeting without me.” That message will be transcribed and sent as a text message and/or email to the other members of the department.
You’re automatically set up as a group yourself. I can easily see myself driving somewhere and suddenly remembering something I need to do. I call Jott (which is already in my cell phone autodial listing), speak the message, and within seconds, it has arrived as a text message and an email, serving as a reminder once I get back to the office.
Jott has launched new functionality this week, allowing you to send your messages to services like Twitter and Jaiku. I tested it on Twitter, and it worked reasonably well, although it misspelled “Cisco.” Fortunatley, if you think the transcribing might err in spelling what you’ve said correctly, you can spell it out instead of simply speak it.
The service is free and, so far, I think it rocks.
So how did I miss Utterz? Jeez, you spend a few weeks on the road and you’re out of the loop!
I first saw the site referenced this morning in a post by Robert Scoble, which directed me over to Jeremiah Owyan’s blog, where he had posted his first Utterz. It looked simple enough, so I did one of my own. You’ll be able to hear any I do in the future in the widget over in the right-hand column of the page, although if they’re interesting enough, I’ll also post them as blog items, like this one.
Utterz lets you post any audio, test, photo or video via your cell phone or email (or direct upload, for that matter). You can put what you’ve posted on your blog or people can access it from your Utterz profile (mine is here and looks like this (only bigger):
The content in an Utterz profile can be shared just like a YouTube video, via an embed code. You can also listen to Utterz over your cell phone. I haven’t explored the full potential of Utterz yet, but will over the next few days as discretionary time allows. But this tool definitely looks like it has potential. Now, if only I could direct my Utterz to my Twitter stream…
11. HC+T update
- vering the morning keynote on the last day of the Ragan Communications Web Content Management conference next week.
- working with an international PR agency to develop a social media curriculum for the agency’s employees.
- helping a global consumer products company redesign its internal portal.
- about intimidating! I’m speaking on social media in February at the annual conference of the National Speakers Association.
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