Blogging

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

WOMMA to issue guide to social media marketing disclosure

UPDATE: WOMMA has issued its press release on its new guidelines for social media disclosure.

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) is set to issue a guide to disclosure in social media marketing sometime tomorrow, February 17. The guide was prompted by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s new guidelines for disclosure of relationships between companies and people discussing them and their products or services in social media venues.

The document is designed to enhance rather than replace the rules that may already exist in your organization. And it’s WOMMA’s intention to continually update the guide given the ongoing evolution of social media.

The guide covers the most commonly used social media channels, including blogs, Twitter and other microblogging tools, social network status updates, video and photo sharing sites and podcasts.

The microblogging hashtag recommendations could be problematic, given the number of similar proposals that have been introduced over the last year or so. (Here’s one proposal; here’s another, and another.) But if all WOMMA members adopt the tags the guide recommends, we may see some consistency emerge around how disclosure is handled on Twitter. The three tags listed in the guide include…

• #spon—Sponsored
• #paid—Paid
• #samp—Sample

WOMMA advises using the same tags on status updates through social networks should there be a character limit in the status update function.

The best advice in the guide—which applies to all of the channels covered—is to provide a link to a complete disclosure and relationships statement, although recommended language for such a statement isn’t included.

The document does recommend language for disclosure that is

clear and prominent. Language should be easily understood and unambiguous. Placement of the disclosure must be easily viewed and not hidden deep in the text or deep on the page. All disclosures should appear in a reasonable font size and color that is both reasable and noticeable to consumers.

For example, for personal and editorial blogs, WOMMA recommends disclosure like…

• I received ___ (product or sample) ___ from ___ (company name), or
• (Company name) ___ sent me ___ (product or sample) ___

WOMMA went through a deliberate process to develop the guide, including creating a blog, Living Ethics, that served as a forum for comments and questions.

I’ll update this post tomorrow when a link becomes available to the official WOMMA guide.

Oh, and by way of disclosure, I was offered a sneak peek at the guide by WOMMA and was not put under an embargo until tomorrow’s announcement.

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Forrester’s blogging policy misses the IP point

Warning: Long post follows.

Readers of this blog and listeners to my podcast, “For Immediate Release,” know thast I focus primarily on the impact of online media on organizational communications. As a blogger and a podcaster with an audience, companies routinely reach out to me with their news and information in the hopes that I’ll find their content interesting enough to share. It’s only about 9:30 a.m. here in the Bay Area and I’ve already received about a dozen such pitches today via email.

Forrester Research is one of the organizations that engages in such outreach—and, candidly, it’s one of the few organizations whose content actually is of enough interest for me to share it with my community. When Forrester issues a report that deals with social media and communications, Forrester graciously offers me a copy of the report. These reports sell for hundreds of dollars or more, and as an independent consultant, I couldn’t possibly justify the cost of purchasing one. Because Forrester shares its intellectual property with me at no cost, I’m able to opine on the research and share the findings I believe are most significant.

All of which I do on my own blog and my own podcast. As a result, readers and listeners learn about the research who otherwise may never have known it existed. Some may become Forrester customers. Which is exactly why Forrester engages in such outreach: Its IP is only worth as much as people are willing to spend on it. The more people who pay for it, the more it’s worth.

Which is why I’m so completely dumbfounded at Forrester’s much-discussed analyst blogging policy. The company is confining its analysts to blogs that reside on Forrester’s own platform for posts about research. The reason, according to Forrester and several of its analysts, has everything to do with intellectual property (IP). In a recent post, Forrester VP Josh Bernoff (for whom I have enormous respect and admiration) explained:

What people need to understand is that Forrester is an intellectual property company, and the opinions of our analysts are our product. Blogging is an extension of the other work we do—doing research, writing reports, working with clients, and giving speeches, for example.

...for Forrester, it serves our clients better to be able to get to all our blogs from one place, and to know the opinions of analysts that they see are part of the other opinions they read in our reports, in press quotes, and in everywhere else we talk.

The revelation of the policy has ignited controversy with opponents and proponents lining up with their various arguments. But for me, the underlying IP argument is perplexing. Consider this comment from Dana Baxter, left to the SageCircle blog that first reported on the policy and kicked off the whole debate:

I regularly read Bruce Tempkin’s blog “Customer Experience Matters” and it’s one of the best blogs I’ve run across. He seems to regularly refer back to Forrester. I didn’t even know that Forrester had research in customer experience until I read his blog. I know I’m not a client of Forrester, so they aren’t making money from me, but I’ve been trying to make the case based on his work. But if they’re shutting down his blog, then I don’t really want to read what Forrester has to say.

This is the key issue. When analysts have their own blogs with dedicated followings, their discussion of the research with which they’re involved can reach people the official Forrester blogs won’t reach. (If you think that’s not true, go back and read Dana’s comment again.) And if keeping the IP on the Forrester site is so all-fired important, why share it with the likes of me so I can report the same IP on my blog and podcast?

(Of course, after reading this post, maybe they’ll stop sharing their IP with me.)

I’m not the only one making this observation. Writing on GigaOm, Mathew Ingram says:

In his blog post, Bernoff defended the new policy as a necessary step, saying Forrester is “an intellectual property company, and the opinions of analysts are our product.” But a strong analyst who connects with readers and builds a following, wherever that following might occur, is a benefit to the company they work for, even if he or she eventually leaves to pursue other opportunities. That is the nature of a web-based business—something the research industry is becoming, whether it likes it or not.

Trying to confine analysts and control the access they have to readers through the web is not only wrongheaded (in our view) but ultimately futile. Strong analysts who are treated in this way will leave anyway, thus defeating the purpose. We believe that social media tools can be used both to build personal brands and to benefit the overall corporate brand, and that is what we encourage.

Why not aggregate content?

The IP distinction is one that Forrester’s proponents raise repeatedly in the debate. The notion seems to suggest that analysts who write about their work on their own blogs are somehow sapping Forrester of its IP. Maybe I’m just dense, but I don’t see how, particularly if those blogs link back to Forrester, bringing the company to the attention of new prospects.

Other companies with bloggers don’t compare because, Bernoff argues, their products aren’t about IP. I would argue that Microsoft and IBM are entirely about IP. Both companies encourage their employees to blog wherever they like. The companies link to those blogs on a page that links to all of the company’s bloggers. (Here are links to Microsoft’s and IBM’s employee blog directories.)

Thomas Nelson Publishers goes one better, pulling the content from each of its employee bloggers into a chronological display of the most recent posts from company bloggers. Admittedly, these posts don’t deal with IP at anywhere near Forrester’s level, but it seems a logical solution, one Tac Anderson suggested in a comment to a post about the policy by Cliff Condon, Forrester’s VP in charge of the company’s social media efforts. Condon replied that too few Forrester analysts are blogging to justify such an effort. ” I feel it’s up to Forrester to help more analysts start blogging by providing them a platform for doing it (rather than creating it on their own).”

In fact, Condon never even mentions IP in his post, asserting instead that the policy is designed to give Forrester analysts a tool designed to get them more involved in social media, to provide each analyst with a personal blog and to make it easier for Forrester clients.

I have no argument with these goals. After all, Hill & Knowlton provides a platform for its counselors to use for blogging. The difference, though, is that Hill & Knowlton doesn’t require its staff to use the platform. Many of the PR agency’s staff maintain their own blogs; their posts are aggregated on the same platform along with original posts.

Is it about control?

Forrester’s representatives argue that the policy isn’t about wielding control over what analyst bloggers write. In fact, they argue, analysts are being encouraged to stretch with their blogs.

Still, one defender of Forrester’s policy—Edison Research Strategy and Marketing VP Tom Webster—thinks control may well have something to do with it, pointing to a post former Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang wrote on his Web Strategy blog that required a follow-up apology. Writes Webster:

This could have (and maybe did) hurt Forrester right in the wallet. It’s not my intent to rehash that particular incident, but let’s all agree it was a significant black eye for the company and indeed the analyst industry as a whole. Forrester can afford to lose an analyst here and there -– but they can’t afford incidents like this.

(Webster, by the way, is a terrific dinner companion.)

I’m inclined to take Forrester’s word for it that the policy isn’t designed to keep a tight rein on its bloggers. After all, a well-communicated policy—like the one Hill & Knowlton implemented—would prevent virtually all such mistakes.

A policy would also preclude analysts from giving away more of Forrester’s IP than they should. But on this point, it’s worth looking at an article appearing in the March 2010 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, “Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead, and a quote from lyricist John Perry Barlow:

What people today are beginning to realize is what became obvious to us back then—the important correlation is the one between familiarity and value, not scarcity and value. Adam Smith taught that the scarcer you make something, the more valuable it becomes. In the physical world, that works beautifully. But we couldn’t regulate (taping at) our shows, and you can’t online. The Internet doesn’t behave that way. But here’s the thing: if I give my song away to 20 people, and they give it to 20 people, pretty soon everybody knows me, and my value as a creator is dramatically enhanced. That was the value proposition with the Dead.

Yep, that’s intellectual property Barlow’s talking about.

So I’m still befuddled about this notion of lost IP. I still don’t grasp how an analyst blogging about the research he’s engaged in on his own blog, informed by Forrester’s blogging guidelines, represents a tangible loss to Forrester. Do they not grasp what Barlow does? Are they less savvy about social media than they’ve been claiming they are?

The Altimeter equation

Most of the speculation by those aghast at the policy suggest its origins rest with The Altimeter Group, founded by former Forrester vice president Charlene Li; Owyang and Ray Wang are both partners who joined Li and Altimeter after leaving Forrester. In his SageCircle post, strategist Carter Lusher writes:

Forrester CEO George Colony is well aware of that savvy analysts can build their personal brands via their positions as Forrester analysts amplified by social media (see the post on “Altimeter Envy”). As a consequence, a Forrester policy that tries to restrict analysts’ personally-branded research blogs works to reduce the possibility that the analysts will build a valuable personal brand leading to their departure.

I’d be more inclined to call this “The Scoble Effect.” Uberblogger Robert Scoble built his audience and his personal brand while blogging about Microsoft on his personal blog. He became Microsoft’s de facto spokesperson, its voice in the social media space. When he left Microsoft, he took that brand with him to each of his subsequent ventures. No single Microsoft blogger has been able to capture the share of attention that Scoble enjoyed, while Scoble ceretainly benefitted from the personal brand he had built based on Microsoft’s IP.

(Side question: If Scoble had been forced to blog on a dedicated Microsoft platform, would the company have deleted that blog upon his departure? One high-tech company—I can’t recall which—was called out in the blogosphere for doing just that and had to reinstate the posts in the face of accusations of altering history.)

I’m not inside the heads of Forrester’s leaders, so I can’t say how much of a factor the fear of losing analysts who build strong personal brands played in the decision. I’d be disappointed if it was a major consideration, since it seems petty and mean-spirited. In his post on the kerfuffle, C. Edward Brice cited David Armano’s brandividuals, “people who represent your brand and their own, balancing the two may be something we see more of, not less as companies and brands try to figure out how to engage on a web that’s become increasingly social and personal.” Brice, senior vice president of worldwide marketing for Lumension Security, writes, “Basically today when you hire someone you bring their on-line social network into your company, and when they leave they take it with them.”

And if you already had a blog?

One of those defending the policy is new Forrester analyst Augie Ray, who will abandon his “Experience: The Blog” in order to comply with the Forrester policy. Ray isn’t thrilled with dropping the blog that has accounted for so much time and energy.

But I also understand Forrester’s reasons for the changes.  There are obvious benefits to the company of aggregating intellectual property on Forrester.com, including Search Engine relevance and creating a marketing platform that demonstrates the breadth and depth of analysts’ brainpower and coverage.

I appreciate Ray’s measured response, but I think it misses the point. He has developed a following on his blog and not all of them will necessarily follow him to the Forrester platform. That represents a considerable number of people Forrester won’t reach with its message, limiting the exposure to prospective new paying customers.

Consider Scott Monty, who brought his considerable following with him to his job managing Ford Motor Company’s social media efforts. He has used the blog effectively as a means of telling Ford’s story to a large audience than he could reach if he had been forced to scuttle his blog and start anew on a dedicated Ford platform.

The value of Scott’s Ford-focused posts still accrues to Ford (even as he continues to build his personal brand), just as the value of a Forrester analyst’s post on her own blog would still accrue to Forrester. Sure, it can also serve to build the blogger’s own brand, but even Forrester’s Bernoff admits that his brand has been built just fine without his own blog. So what’s the difference?

From a personal perspective, had Joe Jaffe told me that I’d have to give up my blog and podcast before joining crayon, I would have declined the offer. While a lot of prospective Forrester analysts may agree to drop their blogs in order to work there, it’s impossible to know how many may never apply in the first place knowing what the policy is. Some have argued that nobody would pass on the job to salvage their blog, but if I would, I’m probably not alone.

Did Forrester conduct a cost-benefit analysis?

I wonder if the powers that be at Forrester engaged in a cost-benefit analysis. What is it truly costing in terms of lost IP? (To reiterate, I can’t figure out where they’d lose a single nickel.) What is the cost if an analyst builds a personal brand and then leaves, taking her blog with her? (You’d also have to factor in how many of those analysts would have left anyway.) And what is the benefit of the expanded reach of Forrester’s messages and stories, the same reach that leads marketers to offer the IP free of charge to people like me?

I may have just answered my own question. If a cost-benefit analysis had been done, I can’t believe it would have led Forrester to adopt this policy.

So why, then? It’s either a provincial and wrong-minded understanding of IP or a knee-jerk reaction to the Altimeter Group situation.

Either way, it’s a mistake.

It’s also Forrester’s call, not mine. The company produces terrific research and I hope this all works out for them and their analysts in the long run.

Monday, February 08, 2010

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #524: February 8, 2010

Content summary: MediaFunnel FIR interview is up; Help A PR Pro Out; Michael Netzley reports from Singapore; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; News That Fits: what Vodafone did when an employee tweeted obscenely, wide and mostly negative reaction to Forrester Research plans to stop analysts from blogging personally; listener comments discussion and FIR Friendfeed Room round-up; news about Thursday’s show; music from Antiqcool; and more.

Get FIR:

• Download the MP3 file (26.2Mb, 65:26)
• Subscribe to the RSS feed
• Get the show at iTunes

Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report, for February 8, 2010: A 65-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

Links for the blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Links pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute - see the show notes home page for info.

• FIR #524 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 8133 9844 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR, or at Jaiku: fir.jaiku.com. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

Join the FIR Discussion Forum and extend your conversations with the FIR community. You can also join the FIR Facebook Community and become an FIR friend.

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So, until Thursday February 11…

Sunday, December 13, 2009

When the front line is empowered to talk to customers

Organizations haven’t exactly warmed up to the idea of front-line employees engaging with constituents in social channels. Despite the fact that front-line employees are trusted more than executives or official spokespersons (according to Edelman’s Trust Barometer), companies simply don’t trust employees enough—and aren’t interested in training them—to avoid the kinds of problems that could arise.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration—part of Homeland Security—doesn’t appear to have the same issues.

A comment by William Reed, a Transportation Security Officer, is among the 57 comments that have been left to a TSA post addressing a leaked document.

The security breach made headlines, prompting a security review. Many of those leaving comments took issue with TSA’s Blogger Bob’s assertion that it was an outdated document that appeared on the agency’s website. “Something still doesn’t pass the sniff test on this one,” one commenter said. Another called it “a lie, or the TSA is breaking the law by issuing false documents for FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests.” And a commenter named Sandra wrote, “Please, Bob, do you expect any person with even half a brain to believe the TSA’s explanation? I’d be willing to bet that deep in your heart, you don’t believe your employer either.”

And so it continued, not surprising given the number of TSA critics who follow the blog and are quick to chastise the agency. But then along comes Reed:

Man that document is older then my current career at TSA. We do video SOP now lol. Obviously it was taken away because some small things in that SOP may have carried over to the newer ones but also because its a smart thing to do. Don’t want passengers thinking that old outdated relic is the new rules for security or anything. So finally, after almost a decade of operation the TSA let one outdated relic of a document escape into the public, yeah like government agencies havn’t had that happen to them before. Seriously not a big deal and if you guys are considering this ammo for TSA flaming I think you should probably reconsider. Our SOP has gained tons of new procedures and tactics that have adapted to confront consant changes to bad guy tactics. The more crafty ideas we block the craftier the bad guys get. 6 revisions?! thats like a whole nother SOP on top of that one in changes.

After that, only a few more comments appear, dealing mostly with (believe it or not) prosthetics.

While I have no certain knowledge that William Reed truly is a TSO, I do know that the TSA moderates comments in order to ensure compliance with its comment policy. The blog even sports a counter that displays the number of comments blocked to date.

So you have to believe those responsible for moderating comments would verify the authenticity of an employee’s contribution.

This is hardly the first example of an employee, acting on his own, coming to his or her employer’s defense. I’ve seen it from employees at Microsoft, Park ‘N Fly, Southwest Airlines and Thomas Nelson Publishers, among others.

The trick to empowering your employees to engage customers—like Reed was empowered to engage the traveling public—is to ensure they know what they can’t say. Well-communicated policies that spell out restrictions are a must. Once front-line employees understand these limitations, they can become one of the most powerful communication forces in your organization.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Questions your CEO should ask before starting a blog

The question of CEO blogging keeps coming up. Opinions mostly fall in two camps:

• All CEOs should blog. As the leaders and chief communicators of their organizations, it is incumbent on CEOs to represent their companies in the social space where so much influence is wielded.
• No CEOs should blog. Because of regulations that govern the kinds of statements CEOs can make, and when, there is just too much risk that an innocent remark could result in a fine.

As with most things, though, the question of CEO blogging is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Clearly CEOs can blog, as evidenced by the number of CEOs who do.

If your CEO is considering blogging, have him or her answer these questions before taking the plunge:

Are you the best person in the company to assume this role?

In the early days of corporate blogging, GM launched one of the earliest blogs penned by a senior executive. It wasn’t then-CEO Rick Wagoner, but rather Vice Chairman Bob Lutz. The decision was based on the fact that the most compelling kinds of conversations GM could have would be about cars, not the automotive business. Since Lutz was the most senior executive with direct responsibility for the vehicles GM produced, he became the executive blogger. Wagoner did post from time to time, when it was important for the CEO’s voice to be associated with the message, using a different company blog.

The focus of the blog is also the key to the next question:

Are you willing to blog about what your stakeholders want to talk about?

Far too many corporate and CEO blogs are filled with material the company wants to push to audiences. While this may make leaders feel good about using a blog, odds are that readers won’t flock to it. These messages are being pushed to them through any number of channels. For a blog to succeed, you need to start conversations about topics your stakeholders want to talk about. Do you know what those topics are? And are you prepared to address them, even if they’re not always what you think is important? If you do focus on topics your readers care about, it becomes easier to digress from time to time with topics you want to share with them. The more the blog becomes a locus of conversation and community, the more interested your readers will be in some of the issues you want to put on the table.

Are you ready to engage your stakeholders in conversation?

The point is debatable, but I don’t believe you have a blog unless you’re publishing reader comments. Without comments enabled, you’re just using blogging software to publish a column. Leaders who blog need to be ready to pay attention to reader feedback and input, and even engage in it. This doesn’t mean a CEO needs to actually read every comment left to his blog, particularly if it becomes popular and attracts hundreds of comments for every post. At some companies, a staff reads the comments, aggregates them based on their topics and sentiment, and delivers a summary report to the executive. Some executives engage directly in the comment while others simply write a follow-up post acknowledging what he heard from readers. But to view an executive blog as just one more one-way, top-down channel is to dramatically reduce the likelihood that stakeholders will pay attention to it. These are people who have come to expect interaction as part of the blogging experience.

Are you willing to commit to posting something regularly—that you’ve written yourself?

You can post as often as you like, but you must post at least weekly (three times a week is better) in order to build momentum, to build the expectation that you’re going to be opening discussions.

This is not a task you can offload to a PR staffer, the way you could when your byline appeared under the ghost-written CEO column that appeared on the inside front cover of the employee magazine. The whole idea underlying a blog is that it’s an authentic, honest message that you wanted to deliver and open for conversation. Nothing is more disingenuous than saying, “This is my blog, I’ve started it so we can have a dialogue about our business, but I’m not really writing it; it’s just not important enough for me to commit that kind of time.”

Your blog doesn’t need to take all that much time. In response to CEOs who have told me they don’t have the time to write a 1,500-word blog post, I respond, “That’s good; your readers don’t have time to read a 1,500-word blog post.” Short, pithy observations, explanations, and reports are ideal. What’s more, you don’t have to actually type anything. Marriott International CEO Bill Marriott dictates his posts into a digital recorder, which is transcribed (word for word) by his staff. At HP, a senior executive calls his posts into a voice-mail box established just for that purpose; his messages are also transcribed by staff for posting.

Ultimately, though, your view should be that you don’t have time not to blog. You should recognize what other CEOs—like Thomas Nelson Publishers CEO Michael Hyatt—have realized: that blogging ultimately saves time by reducing the more time-consuming communications that eat into your day. If you blog well, you’ll find that you’ve reallocated much of the time you spent less efficiently with other channels to your blog.

Are you well-schooled in what you can’t say?

Bill Marriott, CEO of Marriott International, writes about topics that will never cause regulatory problems. His posts talk about his staff, Marriott’s corporate social responsibility efforts, and other topics that would never raise an eyebrow at the SEC. Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz, on the other hand, does blog about the business side of Sun, but is savvy enough about the regulations that govern his words that he is able to avoid writing anything that would cause him trouble. Do you know enough about the regulations, what kinds of off-the-cuff remarks might be viewed as a material forward-looking statement or a revelation about earnings? If not, don’t blog.

Of course, if you’re with a privately held company not subject to SEC rules, this isn’t as important a consideration, although you should keep in mind that there are agencies regulating your business besides the SEC.

Are you prepared to talk about bad news and unpleasant topics?

Your blog cannot be all happy talk, even when your company is hit with bad news. Candor and credibility are contingent upon your being willing to address the issues about which your stakeholders want to hear from you. Are you ready to tackle bad news on your blog and to hear what your stakeholders have to say about it?

If you answer “no” to any of these questions, then you’re not a likely candidate for a CEO blog.

There are alternatives, however, if you’re bound and determined to have your CEO voice heard in the socialmedia space:

• Group blogs—Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly posts an occasional item to the Nuts About Southwest blog, but only when the CEO’s voice needs to be heard. The blog is ready and available to him because of the community of Southwest employees who keep it populated with a wide variety of posts.
• Facebook—A fan page on Facebook affords you an opportunity to create content stakeholders might be interested in and then add a CEO commentary only when the occasion calls for it.
• Video—If your concern is that you’re not the world’s greatest writer, you could always opt for a video blog, speaking (not reading) your comments to a camera. There’s actually a tangible benefit to this approach: Your stakeholders can look into your eyes while you’re talking to them. You can upload your videos to a YouTube channel and embed the YouTube videos in your blog, making it easy for others to spread your words across other channels.

What other criteria should a CEO consider before undertaking a blog?

Here are some other CEOs who blog:

• Paul Levy, CEO, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
• John Mackey, CEO, Whole Foods Markets
• Mike Critelli, now-retired Executive Chairman, Pitney Bowes
• Richard Edelman, Edelman Public Relations

There are many other CEO bloggers. Whose CEO blog would you point to as an excellent example?

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

What the hell is up with Technorati?

Despite a wealth of channels for searching the blogosphere, Technorati remains important because it’s the only tool that offers a clue about the reputation and influence of each blog. By evaluating a number of factors, including inbound links on a rolling six-month basis, Technorati is able to assign a rank and an authority level for each blog. When identifying bloggers for outreach, these metrics have proven invaluable. You can’t find anything comparable on any other blog search engine, including the popular Google Blogsearch.

But like any tool, Technorati’s usefulness vanishes if it’s broken. And Technorati has been broken in a big way for some time. What’s more, they don’t seem to be very interested in fixing it.

For years, this blog has included two Technorati links. One is a widget that displays the blog’s Technorati authority; the other is a link to a Technorati page that lists blogs that have linked to mine. A while back, Technorati relaunched its site with a new design. Suddenly, the long list of blogs linking to mine disappeared; the page now shows zero blogs linking to this one. (Google Blogsearch shows more than 4,000.)

What’s more, the authority on my widget shows 132, but a visit to my blog’s Technorati page reveals an authority of 525.

My rank is showing up as 3,930—not bad if it’s accurate, but given the other issues, to say I’m skeptical is putting a positive spin on the situation.

And that’s the problem. It’s not about my ego and needing to know that people are blogging about my posts (I get that information from Google’s Blogsearch). It’s about trusting Technorati when looking up information about other bloggers. I have no confidence in Technorati, and therefore can no longer use it in my work. I trust the Oakland Raiders to score multiple passing touchdowns in a single game more than I trust Technorati to give me usable results for any blog I’m researching.

A couple weeks ago, when this situation really started to bug me, I did some searching and found that Technorati has a Get Satisfaction page addressing the problem. The explanation from Technorati deals with a long-standing problem with producing good results and the solution, which involves “work(ing) from a clean data set.” The post continues:

Sites that we have added to the clean index are being crawled, having detailed authority calculated, display recent posts (one at the moment) on our site, and contribute to other sites authority. We are continuously adding more and more sites to this index, and are working on ways to do so faster, but as you can imagine, the volume of sites to qualify is enormous.

An impressive number of comments follow the post, none of them happy. A typical comment reads something like, “My blog has lost all of its 2 years authority, plus it’s not showing recent posts and its screenshot is very old. Please help.”

Technorati isn’t responding to any of the comments (as they did occasionally at the outset) and reports of the problems being fixed are more rare than sightings of wild condors in downtown Manhattan, leading to comments like this one: “I’d suggest that either Technorati or Get Satisfaction are ignoring this thread as there don’t seem to be any recent responses to points raised by bloggers.”

I understand that processes can take time, but for a professional service, the response from Technorati is abysmal. The problem is knowing where else to go for comparable metrics on blogger influence.

It goes without saying: Technorati FAIL.

Sunday, November 08, 2009

An extraordinary display of social media leadership

I’m just back from the biennial convention of the Union for Reform Judaism held over the last week in Toronto. I was honored to represent my synagogue, Temple Isaiah of Lafayette, California, as a delegate for the second time.

The highlight of these biennials for me is the Shabbat sermon by the URJ’s president, Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie. Rabbi Yoffie is a dynamic speaker who uses these every-other-year events to launch the Union’s newest initiatives. I sat up even straighter in my seat this year when Rabbi Yoffie launched into an appeal for Reform congregations to embrace social media.

What follows is the portion of Rabbi Yoffie’s sermon focusing on the critical nature of social media.To me, it stands as one of the most impassioned and articulate demonstrations of social media leadership. Rabbi Yoffie’s understanding of the power of this medium, its significance, and its importance is something you don’t often hear from leaders of organizations—public, private, NGO, nonprofit, or any other kind. Remove the religious references (replace “Jews” with “customers”) and this still stands as a shining example of a leader who truly understands the momentous changes taking place around us and who uses his position of leadership to help others grasp what it means to them.

If your own leaders are unpersuaded, you could do a lot worse than have them read Rabbi Yoffie’s words. Coming so eloquently from the heart of a leader, it beats the heck out of the exhortations of social media pundits (myself included) at the never-ending parade of social media conferences.

I’m taking a bit of a risk here, since the URJ’s website contains a copyright I’m probably violating. But I fear that the longer sermon won’t be read by the online communication community with which I am involved. Hence the excerpt and the risk. (Note to the URJ if you’re listening: Consider a Creative Commons license for works like this.)

Disclaimer: The bold-face emphasis that appears throughout this commentary is mine, not Rabbi Yoffie’s.

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The heart of synagogue community is face-to-face interaction. We go to temple—especially now -– to touch, taste, and feel community. We go there for solace, humor, and support among a reassuring crowd of friends and fellow Jews.

That being so, what about the Internet? Will it undermine the synagogue? Some fear yes -— that it will lure Jews away from the old ways of connecting that require us to be in the same physical place. They fear that it will become a substitute for in-the-flesh contact, and that if people start getting their needs met in the virtual world, they will have no need for the real world.

But this is not my view. True, you can’t have a minyan or pay a shiva call online; online experience is not the same as being there. Still, it can be a powerful adjunct. And studies show that heavy Internet use actually encourages users to meet more with other people.

Remember: from the time of Ezra, who rewrote the Bible in a new script, we Jews have always adapted to our environment and taken advantage of the latest technologies. To encode our conversations and sacred texts, we moved with ease from stone tablets to parchment to paper, and we will move with equal ease to the electronic word.

In fact, we should see the Web as one of the most wondrous developments of all time.

In the first place, our members do not have the time they once had. We are working more and sleeping less, and we can’t get to the synagogue as much as we once did. Carving out an hour or two for a class or committee meeting is harder than ever. In this world, we need the benefits that online community brings. In any case, let’s not kid ourselves; our members are spending more and more of their time online, and we need to be there with them.

In the second place, the web does what Judaism has always aspired to do: it opens up the vast treasury of Jewish knowledge to everyone. Judaism is not a religion of elites; we are all expected to learn and to know. The web provides access to Jewish learning on a scale that was unthinkable a decade ago.

And in the third place, the web -– potentially at least -– empowers our members and democratizes our synagogues. The synagogue is the grassroots address of the Jewish world, and the web gives us an instrument to involve and include Jews as never before. This is enormously exciting, and more than a little scary.

Are our synagogues doing great things in this area? Absolutely. Are we making the most of this potential? Not even close. Almost all our synagogues have email lists and websites; but these are usually a way to present information rather than a means to engage their members. Even those congregations that have a blog rarely use it to generate conversation and foster connection.

But I believe that we are missing a critical opportunity. The Internet and cyberspace are changing all the rules of Jewish interaction, and we need to be at the forefront of these changes. We need to create an online, Oral Torah of ongoing Jewish discourse, and invite in the opinions of our members. We need to ask our members to share their personal stories and Jewish memories -– which they love to do when given the chance. We need to encourage hotly debated, multi-voiced, civil discussions on synagogue and local issues, and on Israel and national issues.

The idea is not just to serve our members but to engage them. The idea is not only to inform but also to inspire and create community. The idea is to see the Web not as a bulletin board for announcements but as an act of communal collaboration.

Please note: None of this makes temple leaders less important. Information is not knowledge. Our members will still want their rabbis and cantors, their educators and administrators to listen and to lead.

Nonetheless, we need to be aware of what is happening in our world. We have talked endlessly about how to attract young adults into our congregations. No one is certain how to do it. But if we are ever to succeed with these young Jews, we need to know who they are, where they are, and what they want. Having grown up in the digital world, theirs is a culture of interaction and enablement. They want to inquire, discuss, and argue. They are natural collaborators and community-builders. And they will not be attracted by authoritarian Judaism; they want a synagogue that is more bottom-up than top-down.

That being so, I believe with all my heart that the Judaism best able to reach them is Reform Judaism, and the synagogue best able to meet their needs is the Reform synagogue. We must become the address for technological experimentation -– for web streaming, “virtual board meetings,” and a whole range of creative approaches that the innovators in our midst are already working on. To help our congregations begin this process, the Union has collected some of the best ideas for your review and consideration.

But there is one particular idea that I hope every synagogue will think about immediately, and that is a congregational blog -– not just an electronic temple bulletin, but a truly interactive, online forum. We need blogs because the era of one-way, passive information consumption is over. Our members, young and old, expect to talk back and have a conversation; they think in terms of networks rather than hierarchies. And creating a blog is easy and free, and the technology is so simple that even I can understand it. The Union has produced a guide with sample posts, technical advice, and ideas on how to draw people in. The key is to assemble a team of temple members who will agree not only to write for the blog but to read other posts and to comment. At the beginning, participants may be few, but if we address the real issues in people’s lives, the numbers will grow.

If this is to work, it cannot be the job of the rabbi or the administrator. They may choose to join in, but they have enough to do. Only if lay leaders take this on will a community come into being. As I said, if we ask our members to share their Jewish journeys, most will be flattered and eager to respond. Let’s exchange Jewish memories. Let’s talk about why we come to services or why we don’t. Let’s discuss the big issues of the Jewish world. And Presidents and board members can test ideas and ask for feedback, on anything from dues and membership to personal theology.

It is a rare business nowadays that doesn’t have an online forum for customers to share insights, make observations, and post questions. Given the importance of our sacred work, shouldn’t we be doing the same?

A word about the risks. A blog means you don’t control everything. You must welcome honest and open conversation and give people the freedom to disagree, criticize, and complain. Once, as we see from the Talmud, Jews could be counted on to do this with civility. But today, blogging can be a shoot-from-the-hip medium. And if our blogs are taken over by the kvetchers and the whiners, by the grievance collectors and the supersensitive souls, we are lost. I suggest, therefore, a simple solution: every temple needs a volunteer moderator who will review comments before they are posted. The Union will offer online training to prepare the volunteers for their work. And I recommend three rules to govern what will be posted and what will not: you need to sign your name; your comments will only be posted if they could be read from the bima on Erev Shabbat; and no one blogger will be permitted to dominate the conversation.

Our NFTYites do not agree with me here. They favor a wide open approach and feel that those who are petulant or nasty can quickly be brought around. But I believe that if online conversation is to serve our sacred cause, tact and reflective judgment are essential.

So yes, there are risks, but they are manageable; we will lose some control, but we will gain the ability to hear and to learn, and to reach out in new directions. The greater risk by far is that we will do nothing, and the digital generation will pass us by.

So let’s take up the challenge of the online age. Let this Movement do what it has always done: welcome diversity, encourage community, and join ancient tradition with cutting-edge culture. Let us create Torah, embrace Torah, and search out the unfolding word of God, wherever it may be found.

And by the way, this sermon will appear next week on the Union’s blog, and I look forward to entering into discussion with you.