While most corporate blogs aren’t trusted, it’s refreshing to see a new type of blog appear to meet the needs of transparency, non-pitching, and openness with the community –yet meet the business needs of the corporations.

I used to work for World Savings (Intranet redesign), which was acquired by Wachovia (I’m a customer), who is now merging with giant Wells Fargo, an outgrowth from all the turmoil in the financial sector the last few years. Wells Fargo has a long history of being best in class as a financial institution that understands social, and Wachovia has dipped their toes with Twitter, but is now jumping on board, espicially during times of scrutiny.

What’s the best way to win back trust? Wells Fargo and Wachovia have launched a blog called The Wells Fargo - Wachovia Blog with a kick off post from the CEO of Wells Fargo, John Stumpf.

This is the first social media property that I’ve seen that is focused on a merger. What should we expect from this blog? While I don’t officially know, obviously this content will have to shift to something new after the merger is completed, perhaps they could focus on a community platform? Having videos that shows behind the scenes how the teams are working together to improve the customer experience would also be helpful. The more material shown that shows how the experience is going to improve for me as a Wachovia customer is key, prove to use that this is good for customers.

Give the economic situation will only get worse, what other creative social media deployments should we see next? I’ll make a few predictions: 1) A corporate blog focused on helping those who were laid off find new jobs 2) A community site hosted by a corporation that helps laid off employees connect with others. 3) A variety of online communities appear for alumnus of companies.

Jason Falls

I’ve long been of the belief that the vast majority of social media thinkers and doers easily lapse into the self-gratifying bubble that is our little online world and forgets the primary audience to which we should speak lies not on Twitter or Facebook or blogs. We are good a sharing social media. We are better at stroking each other and the latter is easier to accomplish.

But what it accomplishes is little. I’ve said before that I feel we should spend less time talking to each other and more talking to the un-enlightened. I’ve made speaking commitments for 2009 at conferences and engagements outside my comfort zone for that very reason. The Social Media Club Louisville will take a decided direction on education, offering paid boot camps for non-profits, educators, public relations professionals and more this year. We will focus on the tools, the basics and getting to know social media so that when we do have events to talk strategy, we aren’t met with deer-in-headlights looks and cricket chirping.

But what can we do for our clients, our businesses and our immediate social media needs to get outside that box as well?

Forrester Research's Social Technographics Ladder from Flickr.

Let’s start with Forrester’s now familiar Social Technographics Ladder. This image proposes Internet users are made up of six groups of participants: those who don’t participate in social sites; spectators who look, but nothing more; joiners who maintain profiles but don’t really get “into” it; collectors who will vote, add tags and maybe use RSS feeds but little else; critics who contribute comments, ratings, edit articles in a wiki and participate on other sites but not their own; and creators who publish their own materials.

According to Forrester’s 2008 statistics to fill in those roles, 21 percent of Internet users are now creators, up from 18 percent in 2007. Surprisingly, 25 percent are inactive, down dramatically from 44 percent in 2007. And an astonishing 69 percent are now spectators (up from 48 percent). All other categories increased as well.

Forrester Research's Social Technographic Profile of U.S. Online Adults via Flickr

Here’s what these numbers mean to me and how they translate to actionable strategies for your 2009 social media activities.

1. More people are adopting the social web as a regular activity.
2. With almost 70 percent of all Internet users now watching what is happening on social sites, companies are now at a critical point in time in doing something meaningful there to capture those attentions.
3. The traditional marketing mindset, however, seeks numbers, eyeballs, etc., so the programs developed are aimed at influencers hoping for the trickle-down and long-tail effects of “going viral.”
4. This means the way we are approaching social media targeting is flawed.

Instead of developing programs to entice the creators or critics into talking about our companies, products or services, why don’t we develop ones that focus on the spectators and serve their needs? By giving them what they’re looking for, we connect our brand to their experience in a meaningful way. And frankly, if we do that, the creators and critics will follow.

It’s worth a shot, right?

Here’s a snippet of what I mean:

Let’s say you’re the brand manager for the Smart Car. You develop a lifestyle website around the Smart Car with content focused on green issues, other eco-friendly companies and programs, helpful tips and pointers to a green lifestyle, environmental event coverage, charity partnerships, etc. Think of it as a tree-hugger’s magazine online. (I don’t say “blog” because that’s the first word that turns most spectators — read: brand managers — off.) By giving the spectator the type of experience online they’re perhaps looking for, but also intertwining your very relevant brand into the content and messaging, you’re giving them something useful. By doing so, you enamor your brand with them and have a chance at sales, conversions, etc.

That’s just one idea and not one given a lot of thought. Imagine, Mr. or Mrs. Smart Car Brand Manager, what we could accomplish if I were fully functional, being paid and off my pain meds. (Heh.)

So my challenge to all of us in 2009 is to not stop thinking about the influencers, but start thinking about the larger audiences of people just toe-tipping the social web, too. Let’s give them something to consume, something to do, some people to interact with on behalf of the brand. Why does it have to be on an influencer’s blog? Why can’t it be on our dime, our time and our server? Let’s see what we can do to not scare them off and show them that we’ve been listening. We know you don’t want to be marketed to. We just want to welcome you to our new world where we talk, listen, share and collaborate.

If we do that, 2009 will be our best yet.

Related articles by Jason Falls and Zemanta

• The Incredible Efficiency of Social Media
• Social Media Strategy: Aligning Goals and Measurements
• Top 10 Social Media Tips For Connecting With Non-Blogging Customers
• Social Media Marketing & The Need For Focus

By Jeremiah Owyang and Josh Bernoff and cross posted on Forrester’s Interactive Marketing Blog

At Forrester we tend to look forward, not back. In fact, right now we are preparing our predictions for what 2009 will bring in the social application space. But the end of the year is also a time to reflect. So we looked back at our 2008 predictions to see how we did. Overall, we had one big mistake (vendor relationship management went nowhere) and we were too optimistic on several other predictions. Optimism, it seems, comes along with this space. But we were pleased that the entrance of corporations into the social world seems to be coming along fine, despite the recent Motrin kerfuffle, to cite one example.

Hindsight is 20-20; it’s harder to remember what life felt like in December of 2007, before the recession loomed large, Barack Obama used social technologies to win the election, and social technology became mainstream. But cast mind back 12 months, and then see if you would have agreed with our predictions . . . and what can be learned from the mistakes we made. Here they are, along with the grades we give ourselves 12 months later. (Note: these predictions were in a Forrester document available to our clients (Update: Which included the help of Charlene Li and Peter Kim, who have since moved on to become alumni). We’ve reproduced the predictions, with some edits for length that don’t affect the content.

Our 2008 Prediction: Corporate participation will bring social applications to the mainstream. . . .Emboldened by the success of pioneering efforts like Victoria’s Secret’s Facebook page and extensive private communities like Procter & Gamble’s beinggirl.com, companies will move beyond one-off experiments in social media to establish full-fledged initiatives. Sponsored communities, YouTube videos, social networking groups, and widgets will become a standard part of online marketing campaigns, further pushing adoption by mainstream consumers. . . . By the end of 2008, marketers will be searching for concrete ways to measure return . . .

Result: Give us a B on this one. There were indeed many more social applications, as evidenced by the 150 excellent entrants to the Forrester Groundswell awards. And, there is definitely a renewed focus on metrics. But social is far from universal, and the state of measurement sadly lags social deployments.

Our 2008 Prediction: Community manager roles will gain prominence in companies. As companies realize how important social applications are to their marketing and business strategies, formal budgets and roles will become more standard at large marketers. The staff in charge of those applications might not all have the same title, but they will share similar duties and responsibilities, namely, to develop a social technology strategy and start to deploy social tools and programs.

Result: A-. Community managers aren’t universal. But there are an awful lot of them, and the ones we know have definitely risen in prominence within their companies, see this list compiled of community managers at enterprise class corporations.

Our 2008 Prediction: Corporate social responsibility will take on a new meaning. Corporate participation in Social Computing hasn’t had the greatest run, between fake blogs and flat marketer profiles on social networks that shout at, rather than talk with, site members. Moreover, consumers have become more vocal about preserving control over their information and experiences. . . .Just as Sarbanes-Oxley provides guidelines for internal controls, companies will find themselves answering as well to a growing community of external auditors.

Result: B-. Recent events like the Motrin fiasco show the groundswell is keeping people honest. But we still hear the occasional corporate executive asking us if they can fake it. (We always tell them that would be a very bad idea.) We still think this will come true, but may take another year or more.

Our 2008 Prediction: Customer needs will gain a voice and launch demand-platform prototypes. . . . Customers will state their intention to buy products or services via a Web-based marketplace. eBay’s “Want It Now” program will get a turbo boost when the company turns the existing bulletin board/announcement service into a bidding-based marketplace. College students on Facebook will organize buying clubs centered on an entire dormitory, allowing marketers to move bulk merchandise with a single purchase order. Meanwhile, search engines like Google will create prototype vendor relationship management (VRM) tools that will enable both customers and marketers to find, aggregate, and match user requests to providers.

Result: F. Proved to be far too optimistic; never happened.

Our 2008 Prediction: Micromedia adoption will increase, and marketers will learn to join in. Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, Utterz, and other micro-blogging and micro-media tools will give users the opportunity to share short sentences or audio clips with trusted friends. Better search and aggregation tools as well as the ability to have differentiated, group-based distribution will make these “micromedia” conversations more useful and relevant, extending their use beyond the early adopters. Marketers will learn how to use the new tools to monitor and target these ephemeral conversations and participate in relevant interactions on the fly.

Result: A-. Twitter dominated the micromedia market. Companies from Comcast to H&R Block to Zappos have learned to accomplish real business goals with it. We expect a whole lot of further growth in marketer use of Twitter in 2009.

Our 2008 Prediction: The social graph will open up. In 2008, we will see social network members clamoring for greater control over their social networking site profiles, specifically, the ability to express their personal social graphs across multiple sites, for example, on both Facebook and LinkedIn. What will break down the walls in these walled gardens? Perhaps a disrupter like Microsoft or Yahoo! will open up their respective relationship maps from Web-based address books and instant messenger buddy lists and allow outside developers to build apps on that truly open the social graph. This will set the standard, and every other social networking service will need to follow suit shortly thereafter, or risk the wrath of members unable to control their profiles.

Result: C. This trend is powerful, and will develop, perhaps even the way we predicted. But standards move slowly and we see fragments of technologies from Facebook’s Connect, Google’s Friend Connect, and OpenID. Look for this opening up to gather momentum in 2009 where a standardized protocol between all of these technologies to merge.

Our 2008 Prediction: Social search will make its debut. Social search will finally inch its way into the mainstream by re-ranking search results based on inputs from your personalized search history as well as the searching patterns of your social graph. For example, people with similar searching patterns and people like you within your social networks might have favored a particular site over other results in a search for “china.” If so, that link will move up higher in the results. Leading the path to social search will be small vendors like Collarity, Eurekster, Mahalo.com, Wink Technologies, and Wikia, which will begin with site-based social search results. But also look for Google and Yahoo! to start testing and inserting limited social and personalized search results, and eventually ads, as an optional advanced search at the top of search results pages.

Result: D. Social search didn’t catch on very well. But Google did add the ability to promote or demote search results to its mainstream searches –but it lacked a true social element. We did start to see tools that help people quickly share information like ex-Googlers at Friendfeed but the tool doesn’t highlight search as a primary effort. Now that large web platforms like Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL are expanding their social features we should expect search to be impacted in the next year. Social search will get here, one way or another.

That covers all our predictions from last yea, it’s important that we review who made a prediction and to own up to how accurate it was, and more importantly; what changed and why? We’ll be publishing our predictions for 2009 in a report for clients, keep an eye out for that.

What are your best ideas for what’s going to happen in 2009? And what predictions already out there do you think are right – or wrong?

Despite my heavy usage, I’m on Twitter Hiatus
I’m known for being a very active twitter user, recent applications have tracked my daily usage from being 20-30 tweets on average. I’m not like other twitter users, as I have a very specific method in which I use the tool. However, two weeks ago today, I stopped using twitter, and announced that I’m on temporary Twitter hiatus.

Twitter shows its weaknesses
Why? I’m recalibrating my media plan, and trying to shift and shake things up. First of all, there’s a few things that have caused me to evaluate my media strategy: 1) the lack of context in 140 characters, 2) unthreaded discussions makes it difficult to track conversations in one place, and 3) unsymmetrical networks, meaning if you’re not following someone, what they say creates gaps in the conversation. All of these reasons create challenges on making twitter an effective conversation tool. Perhaps most sadly, I’ve observed the cracks getting deeper during crisis and incidents like motrin moms, sponsored blog posts, and mumbai attacks.

Now at the end of the year, I spent more time in the real world with friends and family, and have had an opportunity to step back and think things through. As a result, I’m finding solace in tools that allow for greater context like this blog, and on Friendfeed.

Time to Refocus
Next, I’m trying to focus more on energizing(word of mouth) and supporting (community) this year, rather than just publishing, in an effort to be more efficient, and to help the community during this troublesome economy. Shel Israel has noticed that despite my inactivity in Twitter (which I still monitor, of course) that the community around me continues to grow. I’m not sure why or how that is happening, but it’s an interesting phenomenon.

You should evaluate how you spend your time
I encourage you during this downtime to evaluate and rethink how you use these social technologies. You should think about the following questions: how has the environment around you changed? how was technology changed? what’s your goal? Are you using the tools in the right way to meet these three questions? You have limited inventory (time) and the world is always changing, are you sure you’re investing your resources in the right way? There’s nearly unlimited tools out there, take the time to think it through.

Stay tuned, I have a new project launching
What to expect from me in the future? With my time saved on not interacting as much in the conversation, I’ve been focusing my efforts on a resource that will help people understand the skills needed during a recession, and how to get jobs –stay tuned people.

Above: I’m thinking about the differences between traditional marketing agencies and social media agencies, this video by Jim the founder of Ignite Social Media agency does a good job explaining the difference. I like how he points out how putting ads on sites, or doing link backs for SEO don’t qualify as engaging in two-way dialog.

Above: Andrew Vascellari gives a comedic rendition of what not to look for in a social media agency, starting with this must read list from Geoff Livingston (update: with Beth Harte).

Jason Falls

One of the social media tools I get the most use out of yet see the fewest people adopting is social bookmarking. For the purposes of this post, I’m going to refer to Delicious.com quite a bit. Not only is it my social bookmarking mechanism of choice, but it is the one utility essentially geared for just that — bookmarking. Not voting, or front page-getting or popularity contests. Delicious is about a place to store your favorite sites and share them with your friends along that network if you choose.

Of course, being all social media’d up, Delicious offers several ways to bookmark (copying and pasting the URL straight into Delicious; using a toolbar bookmarklet for one-click access to the entry field; or even zany sync functions with your browser’s bookmarks or favorites, which make no sense to me if you’re going totally web-based, but I digress.) It even allows you (or anyone for that matter) to subscribe to your bookmarks via RSS or — even better — you can subscribe to certain tags applied to your bookmarks via RSS as well. So if I tag a certain number of bookmarks, “rockstar” and you want to subscribe to all the content I bookmark and then tag “rockstar” to indicate that it was written by a rockstar, I’m a rockstar (and vain) or it’s about Rockstar energy drink, then you can subscribe to just that tag and not see all the other crap I save.

At any rate, Delicious kicks ass and I use it in a number of ways. But tagging content, I recently found, is something I’m not very good at.

What you see below are my top Delicious tags as of late Thursday night, granted after parsing quite a few and transferring several client-based tags to a corporate account. (Hence the most popular “for:DoeAnderson”.) A few top level tags standout that make sense for me — PR, blogging, Louisville, bestpractices, advertising. “SME” is the purposed tag I use to populate the “What I’m Reading” side bar on my blog.

Delicous Tags - Jason Falls 1-1-09

But if you look closer, you can see massive redundancy and disorganization. There are tags for brandenthusiasts, branding and brands. Separate ones for forum and forums. And a run of social media related ones that include no fewer than sellingsocialmedia, socialbookmarking, socialmedia, socialmediamarketing, socialmediameasurement, socialmediarelease, socialmediaroi, socialmediastrategy, socialmediatools, socialnetworking and socialnews. Oh, and there are separate entries for business, CEO and corporate.

And that’s just the snapshot of the top 200 tags. If you get down into the minutiae of my tags, you’ll find entries for (and I kid you not): baseballbats, celebrity, coffee, crafts, culturalbias, DIY, forumettiquette, giving, inspirtation, knitting, lawsuits, methanedigester, parenting, sarahpalin, slander, startingablog, TomTom, widgets, wine, WVU, yuwie and my personal favorite, cowfarming.

The reason for all this disorganization is two-fold. First, tagging is free-wheeling, off-the-cuff and can be whatever you want it to be. The concept is simple. Tag the content with a word or a couple of words that you will remember when looking for the content again, making it easier to find in a search. This can, however, often lead to inconsistencies in your tagging habits over time which is the second problem that resulted in my mess. Being inconsistent with what keywords I used to identify, say, social media measurement articles, produced multiple tags for the same essential information. Had I developed either a system, or kept it bare-bones simple from the start of my tagging life, some two years ago, this mess would not have happened.

So, starting over today, and Lord knows if I’ll ever get time to actually fix it all, here are my practical tips to tagging your content:

Keep It Simple

I would recommend using no more than 2-3 tags per piece of content and keep the words very generic. If it’s about social media measurement then maybe tag it “socialmedia” and “measurement”. If you’re ever tempted to get into monitoring, ROI, quantifying success, etc., default to “socialmedia” and “measurement”. And remember that tagging, especially in Delicious, is space sensitive. Thus “social media” will be tagged as “social” and then also as “media.” Be sure to eliminate the space and make it “socialmedia.”

Keep It The Same

If you’re following the Keep it Simple rule, you’ll probably find it easy to follow this one. Remember, inconsistency is what has killed my organization. So you have to keep coming back to the hard fast rules. If you’re bookmarking tax fraud cases in several states for your law firm, then bookmark them, “taxfraud California” and “taxfraud NewJersey” so you have one laundry list (taxfraud) and can then break it down by state with other filters. Don’t go off putting prosecutors names or state abbreviations or other extraneous information you won’t need. Keep it simple and the same.

Periodically Review

To remind yourself of the tags you are using and to help clean out ones you perhaps threw in by accident in your last, late night fit of social bookmarking, you should log in to Delicious periodically and see your mess. If you have hundreds of tags and none of them make sense, you’ve probably done something wrong. If you see a handful of categories that are popping out as the most bookmarked and you can easily filter and find what you’re looking for at a glance, you’re keeping with the program. It’s kind of like your file drawer - the less you look at it, the more it makes you sick when you do. So be a good steward, remembering that the public can see your mess online, and clean up your junk from time to time.

Don’t Bookmark Everything

This one is a hard one for some to grasp, but bear with me. I bookmark fewer and fewer items these days for one simple reason: I subscribe to just about everything I find interesting online via RSS. If I want to find an article I read on Mark Dykeman’s blog a year ago, I can search my RSS feeds and find it. It’s not much more time consuming or difficult than bookmarking it, so I don’t need bookmarking as much anymore. However, there are purposes and reasons for aggregating everything I find on certain subjects, so bookmarking hasn’t lost its relevance. But I only bookmark what I’m going to later need when writing an article on the subject or preparing presentation for clients, etc.

And as a bonus, here are some Delicious tricks.

1. Use the bookmarklet to add things to Delicious. It’s just quicker and easier. Go here to learn how, it adds an icon in your browser, when you’re on the page you click and the dialog box pops up so you can add descriptions, tags, etc. If you still copy-paste, you need to spend some time getting up to speed on stuff like this. Trust me. it will make your life easier.
2. To share a bookmark with a friend on Delicious, just add the tag “for:username” - so to share one with me, it would be “for:JasonFalls”.
3. To subscribe to a certain tag, just select the tag, then scroll down to the bottom of the page. You should see the orange RSS icon in the lower left.
4. To purpose a certain tag, just create a unique name for the tag and add it to content you want used for that purpose. For instance, I use the tag “sme” to produce the RSS feed of articles I want to appear in the sidebar of my blog as “What I’m Reading.” When I find an article I want to place there, I bookmark it, tag it with “sme” then I take the RSS feed of that tag from Delicous, and format the feed to fit in my sidebar using CSS styles. It sounds more complicated than it is. Ask a web dev type for some help. It’s actually not hard. (And once it’s set up, all I do is tag. Everything else is automatic.)
5. If you’re editing your own tags, there’s a new Beta version of a bulk editor in Delicious now, so you can change a bunch of tags all at once. However, it won’t allow you to bulk add a “for:” tag, so you can dump all your corporate stuff at once. Yep … I had to transfer over 250 Maker’s Mark tags one-by-one. Sucked.

As always, this is an effort in collective intelligence. What are your secrets for tagging, bookmarking, Delicious or similar. The comments are, as always, yours.

Related articles by Zemanta and Jason Falls

• Social Bookmarking In Plain English (from CommonCraft)
• Delicious Mobile? Still a Pipe Dream
• Search results show Delicious remains a tech niche
• Delicious: Tagging The Web For Five Years And Counting
• Web Strategy: Using Delicious For Market Research

Nothing like ringing in the new year with a look at where the industry is headed. My job as an industry analyst is to assess where the industry is going, and how vendors and brands should respond to changes. My upcoming research on the topic of the future of the social web will do just that, and perhaps the most effective way for me to learn from the best and brightest in the industry is to bring them all to one room.

A few months ago, I held an event to bring the industry top leaders together to discuss the future of social networks for my upcoming research report on the topic. I brought forth community platforms, widget companies, social networks, brand monitoring, web analytics, CRM, CMS search companies, and of course, brands that will implement these technologies. Thanks to SAP who hosted this event (thanks Giovanni for the intro) we had a day long working session to uncover what we see are the predictions of the social web, the challenges to overcome, and how they will be beat. Thanks to Kenny Lauer and the GPJ team for assisting me through the event. Special thanks to SAP for hosting this community event.

Folks flew in from around the country to attend this no-cost event, and we brainstormed and collaborated during the day to come up with the three things (and more) that will matter. Most would agree, none of the findings were earth shattering, but were confirmation for the different parties to attend. I’ll be hosting similar events throughout 2009 to bring the industry together, so we can learn from each other, and I can improve my research.

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: socialnetwork socialmedia)

Update: For some reason the pictures aren’t showing in the embedded slideshare, although they are viewable in this version.

The embedded slideshare has more details about the event, if you’ve questions, leave a comment, I’ll answer the best to my ability.

Key Findings
Group findings at the very high level revealed the following, to see the specific three predictions, check out the slideshare. Note, these were not my predictions, but what I gleaned from the attendees.

The social web industry was able to collaborate towards a single goal.

Predictions generated weren’t “earth-shattering” yet group consensus confirmed industry direction.

Most challenges indicated culture and change management processes within corporations –not a technology issue.

The social web is still in early stages –standards have not been fully been developed nor adopted.

Measurement continues to be a key issue to determine progress and value –as well as a lack of standards.

Key relationships were developed pan-industry.

Here’s the roster of attendees
I invited others, but some were not able to attend, I tried to avoid pundits, and focus on those that really do the work not just talk about it. In some cases, I sent an invite to the company, and they selected who would attend, some of these folks were hand selected by me.

Brands
Scott Lawley, SAP
Len Devanna, EMC
Brian Ellefritz, Cisco
Faith Legendre, Webex
Bob Duffy, Intel
Joel Nathanson, Wells Fargo
Joshua-Michéle Ross, O’Reilly
Karl Long, Nokia
Paul Gilliham, Juniper Networks
Tom Diederich, Cadence
Justin Kestelyn, Oracle

Brand Monitoring, Analytics
Brad Brodigan, Biz 360
Aaron Gray, Web Trends

CRM, Enterprise Applications
Sandy Carter, IBM
Param Kahlon, SAP
Oracle
Eugene Lee, SocialText

Widgets/Applications
Rooly Eliezerov, Gigya
Will Price, Widgetbox
Jeff Nolan, Newsgator

Social Networks
Chris Schalk, Google
David Recordon, Six Apart, OpenID
Surya Yalamanchili, LinkedIn

Community Platforms, CMS
John McCormick, Documentum EMC
Adam Weinroth, Pluck
Bryan House, Acquia
Cameron Deatsch , Jive
David Carter, Awareness
Lyle Fong, Lithium
Michael Chin, Kickapps
Mike Walsh, Leverage Software
Rob Howard, Telligent
Rusty Williams, Mzinga
Peter Friedman, LiveWorld

Expect more on this topic as I dive into this research for 2009, I plan to host this roundtable each year, will try to circulate different attendees as possible.

I’m practicing what I preach to clients, and am adopting one of the five objectives we call “Embracing” which is when brands use social technologies to collaborate with their customers to create new products. In this case, the product is my blog, and the customers are you, my community.

I’m undergoing a blog redesign, and after deciding on designers (read the process) I’m working with Mitch from studionashvegas. We’ve done several comps on my redesigned logo, which is now finalized, but am looking for feedback from YOU, my readers on the blog redesign.

I study community, and this blog needs to serve your needs as well as mine. I know who my audience is from real research (see stats), it’s primarily interactive marketers at agencies, corporate, and consultants. Since I’ve outgrown this current design, see the overflowed right nav, it’s time to clean up the layout, make it easier to find information and highlight what I think is important.

Although we’ve taken a few comps to get to this point, here’s the latest version we’re willing to share. Since you’re going to be looking at this design as a community member, I want your feedback, and am watching for patterns in suggestions, or what you like.

Click image to see large version

We’re also having the same discussion on Friendfeed. Here’s to making a great blog to suit our needs as a community, love to hear your opinion, please leave a comment below.

The Airforce has created a process flow diagram that indicates very succinctly how the Air Force can and should respond to blog posts, there’s a lot to learn from here, and for the most part, I try to follow these similar rules. The Airforce, well all military units across the globe come across criticism, so establishing a clear sense of communication guidelines.

Thanks to Joey DeVilla for posting this, who learned of this from David Meerman Scott who was in contact with Capt. Faggard who’s involved with the Airforce’s social media team: Twitter, and a blogspot blog, (I’m surprised they don’t have their own blog on the airforce websites, so we’re going off David’s word that this is authentic)

There’s a lot to be learned from this military diagram that can be applied to corporations or even your personal blogging efforts.

On a personal note, my Grandfather was a decorated Lieutenant in General Patton’s 9th Army AirForce station in Europe in WW2, he flew a P47 Thunderbolt, and was one of the very few Chinese American pilots in the war. You can see clippings of an article that featured him (the beautiful lady is my Grandmother). The plane? He named it after his hometown here in Silicon Valley the “San Mateo Belle”.

by Josh Bernoff

It's amazing how the world looks different once you think that people should be treated as humans.

I said I would call out examples of companies behaving in a way that is not as human as it should be. But companies are made of humans, too, and have objectives. So I will present the company's point of view as well, so we can discuss what ought to happen.

The call

On Monday I got a call from a machine. The recorded voice said this, basically:

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts needs some information from you about your health insurance. This call is for Joshua Bernoff. If you are this person or the spouse of this person, please press 1.

OK, I'm thinking a few things now.

• Why is my health insurance company calling me? Are my benefits in danger? Do I owe somebody money? Is someone hurt?
• I don't like getting calls from a machine, especially one that demands I answer questions.
• How can I be sure this is really my insurer and not a scam of some kind?

So, of course, I pushed 1 and got connected to a woman who asked what other insurance I have. When I asked why, she provided the unhelpful answer "Coordination of benefits." That sounds like something that helps them, not me. Eventually she admitted this was voluntary, and I hung up. I am resistant to giving out information about my health to people who call me. Aren't you?

The company's side

I talked with, Tara Murray, a spokesperson for BCBS of Mass. She told me that Blue Cross needs to know about who has Medicare and situations (as when both parents of a child work) where a person can be covered by more than one type of insurance. Why? First, if they bill when Medicare should be paying, this is a violation and they get penalized by the government. And duplicate payments to health care providers drive costs higher.

According to BCBS of Mass., they start by sending letters, which generates 50% responses. These automated calls have added another 20% responses, and cost less (of course) than actual people calling. "Not everybody loves the calls," explains Tara, "but they seems to be helpful in getting the increased response rate, and helpful in the goal of keeping costs down, for members and for ourselves."

Also, after reviewing a draft of this post, Tara responded with this: "[A]fter we talked about your recommendations, the business owner was provided your feedback and he noted that he is going to look into how to improve communicating the goal and the benefit to the member." At least they are open to improving.

Are they treating me like a human?

No. Robocalls from your health insurer don't qualify as treating me like a human. Neither does asking for information without providing a good reason.

While I recognize what BCBS of Mass. needs here, that's only because I took the time to call their spokespeople. Most people won't understand what's going on here. The insurer runs the risk of a backlash including blog posts like the one you are now reading.

I feel that companies must use robocalls very carefully. When my pharmacy generates an automated call to tell me that my prescription is ready, that's good. When my dentist's office calls to remind me of that I'm due for a cleaning, I guess that's ok, since I know him. But a health insurance company trying to coordinate benefits? Doesn't pass the test.

My second suggestion is that the company be explicit about why it is collecting information. "We need to know if you have medicare or are covered by another policy, to avoid duplicate payments and keep our rates low," might be better than "Give us your information for coordination of benefits."

Finally, what prevents them from communicating by email instead of interrupting what I'm doing? "I'm calling from Blue Cross Blue Shield" commands immediate attention, since a call from your insurance company sounds medically urgent. Instead, they are collecting information for their own benefit. An email is far less interruptive and more appropriate for this sort of thing. Is there some regulation against insurers collecting their subscribers' emails, or against employers providing them?

The medical world is inhuman enough already, and so is the insurance world. Blue Cross, please stop the robocalls and treat me like a human.

Blog readers, what's your opinion?

By David Finch

Let’s face it, we’re all looking for that “special” tool or application that will make our job or online experience easier and more productive. Every year there are a list of tools and services that are released to help make this happen. However, the challenge is weeding out what works and what doesn’t.

Over the past year, I’ve added some innovative tools to my social media toolbox. Here are my favorites as well as those that I continue to go back to.

My Top 5 for 2008:

1. Tweetdeck - Tweetdeck is a desktop application that allows you to take all the information that comes through Twitter and break it down into more consumable pieces. Tweetdeck will allow you to setup columns into groups, replies, search as well as a live feed.

You’ll be surprised how much your Twitter experience changes by adding Tweetdeck to your social media toolbox.

2. Twitter Search - Twitter Search allows you to keep up with all the conversations that are taking place within Twitter. Twitter Search will help you filter all the real-time information by topic, keyword or Twitter user. Twitter search works great to track replies as well as daily trends.

3. Twellow - Twellow is a Twitter search engine and search directory. Twellow is a great tool to find individuals that have similar interests. It makes it easy to find those that are involved in marketing and advertising, as well as accountants and graphic designers. One additional feature is that it lists their last “tweet” and the number of followers. If you’re building a Twitter community around your niche, this tool can be extremely beneficial.

4. Google Trends - Google Trends is one of the best tools for tracking what’s hot at the moment. It provides charts and graphs of searches as well as trends for any particular day. It works great in helping you monitor what type of content is getting the most attention.

5. Yahoo Pipes - Online Brand Protection - Yahoo Pipes is a web application that provides a user interface for building applications that aggregate web feeds, web pages, and other services. The Yahoo Pipe, Online Brand Protection works great to monitor conversations that are taking place online about your brand. Adding the RSS feed to your feed reader makes it easy to track and monitor what’s being said.

While this is definitely not everything that’s in my toolbox, these are the tools that I use on a daily basis.

What are your top social media tools? Which ones do you use on a daily basis? Leave a comment. I would love to hear what’s in your toolbox.

This has been the busiest year of my career by far, I’ve traveled (and held blogger dinners) in great cities like Tampa, NY, Virginia, Hawaii, Colorado, Austin, Dallas, So Cal, Barcelona, and Tokyo; I’ve accrued many-a-frequent flyer mile. I published several research reports, (won an award), did more public speaking than ever before, delivered above my average of client engagements, was quoted a few times in the press, and grew this blog and twitter account, even though I’ll still get paid if I stop blogging.

Of course, not everything went well. There’s always room for improvement, I need to be better prepared for client engagements (I didn’t do hot on at least two client engagements), I was criticized a few time by bloggers, got duped by Janet and need to check my ego before I get trapped. Outside of work I need to stay on top of my health, and I need to do better at balancing personal and work life.

Perhaps one change is that I’ve now been given the stigma of ‘guru’ which I really dislike. Why? I want to be known for what I can do, not just thought leadership. I produce research reports (products) and help my clients make decisions and give them recommendations (services).

As a result, you’re going to see some changes in my behavior this year, I’m going to do less ‘talking’ and focus more on ‘listening’ and ‘energizing’ (what we call ‘word of mouth’), that’s why I’m taking a Twitter hiatus. Perhaps most importantly, I plan to continue to ‘support’ my community, many people are going to be hurting as they wont be working, keep an eye on this blog in the coming weeks.

Kat French

If you read this blog, odds are good that you follow Jason on Twitter or Facebook. If that’s the case, you’re probably aware that Jason is currently recovering from surgery.  

Unless, of course, you were actually following our suggestion from last week that you spend your holiday break not checking social media sites.  (I wasn’t able to do it entirely either, natch.)  So for this week, at least, you’ll have to make do with David and me.  

As we’re approaching the new year, it’s a natural time to start making those big picture, long range plans to dominate the world of blogging, podcasting and other social media in 2009.  

In the French household, we traditionally have a New Year’s Eve movie party, where we hang out with friends, eat, drink, and watch our perennial favorite movies from over the years.  Every year, we plan to watch either the Lord of the Rings or Star Wars saga in all its unabridged, 12-hour glory.  Every year, we fail to do so.   So I thought I would combine my love of cheesy cult movies with some End of Year Planning for today’s post.

First Cult Movie Lesson:  Be Helpful and Transparent About Your Motivations.

Inigo Montoya: I donna suppose you could speed things up? 
Westley: If you’re in such a hurry, you could lower a rope or a tree branch or find something useful to do. 
Inigo Montoya: I could do that. I have some rope up here, but I do not think you would accept my help, since I am only waiting around to kill you. 
Westley: That does put a damper on our relationship. 

- The Princess Bride

Social media runs on social capital.   Social capital is earned by giving.  Be helpful, be a resource, “find something useful to do.”  But let’s face it–we all have our own motivations for doing this–and that’s okay, as long as we’re open and honest about them.  Especially if your motivations are evolving as you move into 2009, keep communicating that evolution.  Some motives (making money among them) will probably never win you any popularity contests.   Be honest about them anyway.  

Second Cult Movie Lesson:  Remember the Fundamentals 

Lisa: You had to be big shots didn’t you. You had to show off. When are you gonna learn that people will like you for who you are, not for what you can give them. Well, in your race for power and glory, you forgot one small detail. 
Wyatt: We forgot to hook up the doll. 
Lisa: You forgot to hook up the doll. 

- Weird Science

Social media practitioners are early adopters, always on the lookout for newer, faster, shinier tools.  We tend to tinker, always tweaking our blogs and profiles with new widgets or a new theme.  But in that constant tinkering, pimping, tweaking, and experimenting, it’s important to not lose sight of the basics.   Producing great content.  Maintaining consistent frequency.  Optimizing for search.  Building relationships.  Do this well, and you can get by without every bell and whistle.  Don’t do it well, and there’s not a widget on earth that will help you succeed.   

Third Cult Movie Lesson: Always Be on the Lookout for Allies

Reggie Lampert: I already know an awful lot of people and until one of them dies I couldn’t possibly meet anyone else. 
Peter Joshua: Well, if anyone goes on the critical list, let me know. 

- Charade 

If you’re thinking about strategy for 2009, you need to be thinking about strategic relationship building.  Do you have a mentor? If not, finding one needs to be on your 2009 to-do list.   If you’re a “journeyman” practictioner, consider taking on a protege or two.   We often learn by teaching better than we do by studying others.   Either way, be judicious in your search–find someone who is motivated, but doesn’t stay constantly too overcommitted to make a good partner. 

Final Cult Movie Lesson:  Balance is Key. 

Daniel: When do I learn how to punch? 
Miyagi: Better learn balance. Balance is key. Balance good, karate good. Everything good. Balance bad, better pack up, go home. Understand?

- The Karate Kid 

It’s easy to get consumed by the work, because honestly, this is fun work.  It’s easy to let things get out of balance.  As you work your social media strategy for 2009, remember to take time away from the keyboard to maintain a life that’s rich in relationships and real-world experiences.  The bonus is that those things can only improve your work.

So that’s my list of four valuable lessons to be learned from Hollywood while planning for 2009.   Got any to add?  Drop them in the comments.

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly digest on the Social Networking space, which I cover as an industry analyst. By creating this digest (I started this over a year ago) it really helps me to stay on top of the space I cover.

I’ve created a new category called Digest (view archives). Start with the Web Strategy Summary, then quickly scan the succinct and categorized headlines, read text for my take, and click link to dive in for more.

Subscribe to this blog in your feedreader, or use the email subscription box in the right column. Or you can subscribe to this digest tag only and not receive my other posts.

Web Strategy Summary
This digest contains two weeks worth of news as the end of the year tends to slow down. Even with that said there are some interesting happenings in the space such as Facebook’s growth exceeding 140mm users, more cases of viruses and scams, and increase of adoption of social networks during a recession.

Growth: Facebook’s user base at 140mm users
Facebook continues to grow at rapid speed, I met with Mark Zuckerberg last week, and he told me they now have 140 million users, Inside Facebook has more on the stats.

Virus: Look in the Mirror, your Face(book) looks like a KoobFace
The latest strain of the Facebook virus “KoobFace” is an evolution from a previous one, and now spreads to other networks. Beware of odd looking messages and don’t click on them.

Scam: Marketers create fake groups to spam future students
A marketer trying to reach college students has created fake groups in order to get them to quickly sign up and get their friends on board. In the long run this will result in the ability to glean info as well as market products to this group. Certainly not ethical, I’m sure if it’s illegal.

Identity: Facebook, Google and MySpace Logins
Respected thought and practice leader David Berkowitz sheds light on the differences between Google Friend Connect (go wide), Facebook Connect (new visitors), and MySpace’s (overlap of audience) registration specifics –and how media brands should choose.

Launch: Watercooler Aggregates their distributed network
This application network was primarily distributed on social networks like Facebook, but now is centralizing the experience by creating a stand along website called TVLoop that will aggregate all the discussions from various social networks to one location.

Press: Advertising on Facebook Questioned
This NYTs article reflects on P&Gs recent marketing efforts within Facebook. Aside from highlighting the Crest white strips campaign, it challenges that most campaigns are not successful.

Research: Consumers love social networks—but advertisers are still standoffish
eMarketer indicates that many marketers are not on board social networks despite that fact that millions of consumers are on board. Of course this doesn’t account for other forms of marketing –like participating. in the discussion or creating sponsored pages or groups. Given that advertising performs very poorly in social networks, we shouldn’t be surprised.

Communication: Facebook used to ’serve’ legal notifications
Sign of the times, Facebook ‘pokes’ are being used for court notifications.In Australia, a court recently allowed a lawyer from a bank to serve papers for a foreclosure.

Usage: During recession, increase in social networks to increase –relieve anxiety
In this article by BusinessWeek “The Recession: My Facebook, My Therapist” people that were laid off can now communicate with others –to network, grieve and relieve.

Metrics: Bebo launches measurement suite
Bebo announced that it has launched new engagement metrics and tools for application developers. These tools will provide new metrics and engagement tools to nearly 100 Java, PHP, and Rails developers who have created applications.

Announcement: Yahoo launches Y!OS to build apps on top of email platform
This announcement, much in timing with Microsoft’s Live announcement will allow third party developed to extend their experience on the largest social network that we know of: email. Expect other email platforms to allow applications to interact with these large communities over 2009.

Ads: MySpace v. Facebook Advertising Showdown. Which Platform Is Better?
This comparison (although you should read the notes at the top showing this isn’t fully scientific research experiment) demonstrates why Facebook’s advertising system is better than MySpace.

Humor: This fun video shows how you’re my Facebook girl
Have a laugh with this one, I wonder where he got those glasses –they look mighty cool.

If you’re a social network, or widget company, I want to know of your news, send me an email, or leave a comment below. Help me stay up to date.

Hungry For Social Networking Stats? Then you should see my collection of Social Networks Site Usage: Visitors, Members, Page Views, and Engagement by the Numbers in 2008? Bookmark it, then share it with others as I continue to update it.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Culture meets Social Networks, I wonder what high school would have been like if I had social networks or even email available. We communicated using pagers –but few of us had cell phones so it was quite odd. I’m sure rumors, relationship status, and test cheat notes spread faster than ever possible. If you like this video, I’ve posted up a few others Videos: When Social Media enters Popular Culture.

Best line? “I poke you, and you never poke back”.

We’re spending time with our families for the rest of the week. But we didn’t want to leave you hanging. Here’s the first-ever look at the three of us together. Happy Holidays to you and yours.

by Josh Bernoff

Last week I lamented that so many marketers have forgotten how to be a human. Now I'd like to introduce you to one who hasn't.

Rentvillas.com rents houses and apartments to Euroepan travelers, about 2,000 rentals every year. I interviewed Suzanne, the founder. Kevin, her son is the CEO and Web wizard.

I am a Rentvillas customer. Traveling to another country where everything is different -- the power outlets, the language, the time they eat lunch -- is scary and intimidating, especially if you vacation with your children. In this frame of mind, I found Rentvillas four years ago, when planning a trip to France. I used them again for my trip to Italy this September. And I have to say, this is a company that acts like a human, and treats me like a human, in ways that surprised and pleased me.

Can this be done electronically? Definitely. I've already written about their incredible marketing email. Here's an excerpt:

As I wander through the picturesque main street of tiny Castellina-in-Chianti, I find myself a bit dismayed. It's 2 PM, and I'm famished. In America this wouldn't be a problem, but here in Italy I'm faced with empty streets and closed doors. That's right: lunch is over, and everyone is fast asleep.

Where was I at noon? I was photographing Podere Cristina, the most family-friendly accommodation I've ever seen. Younger guests are welcome to play with the outdoor toys and splash in the pool, while adults will appreciate the window screens (rare in Italy) and terrace views. Everyone who visits raves, which is why I was assigned to bring back some better shots. Check out Earth, Air, Fire, and Water-- believe it or not, there's still some availability for this year.

Visit the Web site, enter your requirements, and sort through sites with photos that are hard to resist. There are plenty of quirks in these little cottages, and the extensive customer-generated reviews help you figure out just what inconveniences you can live with (more on the reviews later).

After you sign up, you're assigned a travel advisor (one of 13 employees at Rentvillas) who will answer anything. I asked mine where the local Internet cafes where, and got back a listing and a couple of links. A nice packet arrives in the mail with a booklet of practical advice on stuff like mobile phones and when things are closed, along with an actual Michelin map of the area you'll be inhabiting.

The reviews make the site work, so Suzanne and her team work hard at them. A week or so after you get back (enough time to get over the jet lag) you get the email asking you to submit a review. If you ignore it, they'll gently remind you again, and remind you that you could win a free rental. If you ignore that, you'll get a phone call from Suzanne. This is persistent, but not in an annoying way, since they're not selling you anything. Suzanne proudly informs me they get more than 80% of customers to complete a review survey (and 99% say they will use the company again).

But Rentvillas doesn't stop with reviews on its site. Once you fill out that review, you'll get a personal email from Suzanne. Here's the one she sent me:

Dear Joshua,

I have just read your reviews of Ca’ Muraro and Il Canale Grande.  I am delighted that you had such positive experiences, and that you took the time to share your comments.  With regard to Ca’ Muraro, I will let the owner know about the refrigerator needing to be replaced – but that you loved the location and the wonderful garden.  It sounds as though your Venice apartment needs some updating – and was a little far from the major sites.  I’m glad that you found it quiet and a good place to “crash”, however!

Now that you've given us your reviews, might you be willing to take a few moments to share your experience with other travelers beyond Rentvillas.com?  The Rick Steves web site is a good resource for travelers, and we'd love to see your review on their site.  Just click on the following link (check the Posting Guidelines listed to the right) and enter your comments in the box.  Here's the link:

http://www.ricksteves.com/graffiti/graffiti23.html

Whether you decide to contribute a review to the Rick Steves web site or not, I want to thank you most sincerely for the review that you submitted to our site.

Reading property reviews like yours is the best part of my job.  Thank you!  You are now registered in our end-of-year drawing for a free vacation rental for 2009!

This knocked my socks off. Suzanne sends at least 5 of these notes a day, all with personal touches like mine. The result is a series of positive reviews on sites like Ricksteves and Slowtravel.comSlowtrav.com. Yes, that takes work. Yes, it's inefficient. Yes, it's effective.

Those who read the Groundswell blog regularly know I concentrate on results. So I persuaded Suzanne and Kevin to share some results with me:

• 20% of Rentvillas customers rent again with three years (this is a big-ticket item, after all)
• 40-50% of customers come from referrals. I bet their net promoter score would be sky-high!
• Their email click-through rate is 3 to 4%.

I'll close with some final words from Suzanne. Remember, this woman writes 1700 personal emails a year, just to generate reviews. Here's what she says:

I still am having a good time. I love that I’ve made all these great friendships with people. We have such good relationships, it just makes such a difference.

Is that how you feel about your job? Why not? Being a human isn't just good business, it's a lot more enjoyable, too.

by Josh Bernoff

As usual, Seth Godin has crystallized an idea more briefly and powerfully than the rest of us. Read what he says about viral marketing, and take it to heart. From his blog post:

Something being viral is not, in an of itself, viral marketing. Who cares that 32,000,000 people saw your stupid video? It didn't market you or your business in a tangible, useful way.

Marketers are obsessed with free media, and, as is often the case, we blow it in our rush to get our share. We create content that is hampered or selfish or boring. Or we create something completely viral that doesn't do any marketing at all.

I've pointed out that viral "campaigns" that work have to balance the desire for people to spread them with the value to the brand. Here's one that's likely to work -- but you do have to work a little to get to the brand (did you figure out who did it?). Good, but not that perfect balance. Still, 400,000 views later, a fine viral campaign. Here's what I said before about video, which is a fine watchword for anything viral.

When it comes to viral video, you need to make sure 1) you create something people will spread and 2) that the video carries a payload -- a message about your product. Fail on point 1 and your video won't spread. Fail on point 2 and you'll be a hit -- but it won't help your company. It's a very difficult balance. Blendtec hits it brilliantly, as does Greg the Architect. Very few others have.

From the Forrester Groundswell awards, here are a few others that worked well:

• Xanadu's viral campaign to get the Tony Award. They didn't get the Tony, but they won the New York Times theater poll.
• The Travel Channel's "Kidnap" application for Facebook. 1.7 million people "kindnapped" by their friends, have to go to the Travel Channel site to get free.
• Reebok's Run Easy. Share photos and Google maps of where you run.
• Swarovski Enlighted watch design contest. 2,000 designs later, Swarovski has new ways to sell its gemstones with sparkling new designs.

None of these embody Seth's principle that the best apps have viral built right into them. But we can't all create Facebook. Hit the right balance between spreadable fun for the visitors and value for your brand and you can still succeed. It's not easy, but it's worth it.

By Jason Falls

I recently arranged for a group of bloggers in a certain industry to receive some exclusivity in advance notice of a new product. There was no stipulation from my client that they write about the product, though we anticipated they would given some of the first, hands-on exposure to it. All of them wrote about it and most in favorable fashion. The new product is off to a good start and I’m happy that some good, new-fashioned public relations helped.

(I say new-fashioned because old-fashioned is sending blast emails to hundreds of media outlets or bloggers and calling it a day. New-fashioned is reaching out personally to individuals to build a relationship and working with them to meet their needs and yours in symbiotic fashion.)

What’s even more impressive about the success of the new product outreach is that when I originally approached this group of bloggers about the possibility of getting them on the inside of a product launch they responded with a complaint.

“Why is it that your clients think we’re good enough to try and hock their PR crap on, but when we approach them for advertising dollars we get the run-around?”

Fair question.

The answer wasn’t easy for them to swallow, but here it is:

First, you don’t have eyeballs. Clients who work with advertising agencies are normally paying a lot of money to reach as many people as possible. Traditionally, advertising dollars are spent trying to reach the most number of people at the lowest per-person cost. While advertising on your blog is far cheaper than any other form of media buy my client might have, your total audience is a rounding error in what they normally reach. The PR outreach includes you because A) bloggers are often looking for good material, especially the exclusive kind, and it might be an easy sell to place our product information in front of your audience and B) bloggers often serve as clearinghouses for material for larger audiences and influencers, even traditional journalists. Your blog is niche, but influential. We wouldn’t spend dollars on your blog because you don’t have quantity in audience. We’ll gladly spend some nominal time and dollars with a PR effort, however, because we think you have a higher quality audience.

Second, you don’t make it easy for us. For a blog to put itself into serious contention for advertising dollars, the buyer needs to know your traffic, your demographics and your reach. Unless your site is big enough to be measured regularly by ComScore or you’ve added the Quantcast code to produce some analytics of your audience, we don’t know who your readers are. I can’t convince a brand manager to spend $500, $1,000 or $10,000 on a blog ad buy if I can’t reasonably say the audience includes the target demographic we’re trying to reach. And I’m sorry, “Well, we write about cars, so our audience is dudes,” doesn’t cut it. Most bloggers don’t want to share their traffic numbers. They either are ashamed they have a small audience, jealous of those with bigger audiences or just don’t realize if they did they might get more advertisers. You have to help us before we can reasonably help you.

Last, online advertising is much less effective than online editorial coverage. Think about it. When’s the last time you clicked on a banner ad? When’s the last time you even looked at one long enough to recognize the product, the message and consider clicking? Now tell me what product or service Chris Brogan wrote about in his controversial Dad-O-Matic post from Dec. 2? I read the post. I remember the product, learned something I didn’t know about it and perhaps even brought it back into my consideration set. (Not really. I don’t shop. But still.)

Gladly, this small group of bloggers was delighted I was so honest with them. I’m sure a few of them ran out and signed up to have Quantcast measure them or at least reconsidered how they package and approach sponsors. Despite the reasons listed, though, I pursued an advertising buy on behalf of the client. While due diligence went a long way in forging a better relationship with the bloggers, ultimately the plan didn’t work out. They still warmly received the product and wrote about it on launch.

The combination of my experience working through advertising issues with bloggers, the prevailing wisdom that traditional advertising is broken - at least to the point that its performance is being questioned now more than ever - and the hullabaloo over Brogan’s paid post got me thinking about the future of advertising again. I’ve said before I think a new way of advertising to customers is coming. From, “The Demise Of Online Advertising Is Upon Us,” on Sept. 8:

We have to come up with something better.

By we, I mean some combination of advertising professionals, marketers and media outlets. Whomever cracks the code first will have a leg up on redefining an entire industry. What’s intriguing is that the answer is going to be a blend of advertising, content and engagement which makes me think social media thinking will have something to do with it.

Pay-per-click and cost-per-thousand are becoming tired for chief marketing officers because they under-perform expectations which, in and of themselves, are all out of whack because of the bullshit Nielsen, Arbitron and others have been feeding them for decades. So smart marketers are looking toward engagement and content - elements of social media - to reach their audiences. Some, like Izea, are pushing the boundaries and experimenting with sponsored posts, which are more effective in delivering messaging so long as they’re read. What this proves is marketers are looking for more effective ways to deliver their messages to consumers.

Was Izea wrong to lure influencer bloggers into a $500 gift card in exchange for a post scheme? No. Was Chris Brogan wrong for accepting the offer and blogging about K-Mart? Not unless Chris Heuer was, too, which he wasn’t.

In my opinion the sponsored post will find a nice living space in social media because most blog readers and mainstream consumers either A) Don’t notice it’s sponsored or B) Don’t care as long as the content is relevant to their need in reading said blog. I browse the posts at Uncrate.com fairly regularly. If one of their posts was sponsored it wouldn’t bother me so long as the product fell into the category of stuff guys would love. If it was for Nice-N-Easy hair coloring for women, it might bother me. Let’s hope Uncrate’s editors aren’t that dumb. Darren Rowse’s blog is chock full-o-ads. Doesn’t bother me in the least because I get value from his insights and the man has mouths to feed. Brogan caught heat for his sponsored post for one reason: To date he has epitomized the core tenants of social media philosophy - sharing, transparency and a near void of consumerism. On ChrisBrogan.com, that post would have been highly inappropriate. It was on DadOMatic.com where it was exceptionally well received, by the way.

What has been lost in this whole debate is that all Izea did was offer up a tried and true PR tactic. They provide access to the product for a media outlet to write about it. While I’m personally not a fan of the play or no pay approach, you can’t find a PR firm out there that hasn’t shipped free products, paid for media junkets or offered gratuitous perks to media outlets to fan the flames of a pitch. Crossing the line to insist on coverage in exchange for the perks does make it advertising and is less credible as such.

So what happens now? The Izea experiment has shown that A) Sponsored posts do get the word out there but that B) In some circles they’re not well received. Developing what advertising will look like in our new, social connectivity-dominated web was nothing more than trial-and-error in what will eventually become the greatest communications invention of our time: the effective and engaging online advertisement.

But what the experiment also tells us is that whatever the future of advertising is, it will be centered on content and engagement which is what good public relations has been doing for years.

Right? Wrong? The comments are yours.

Related articles by Zemanta and Jason Falls

• Web ad spend growth set to plummet in 2009, says eMarketer report
• When Bloggers become Corporate Sponsors
• Can Advertising Truly Be Social?

I happened to stumble into Kmart in my local area, went for the Motrin and created this mashup. Popart? Brand Mashup? A case study in a jpg? You be the judge.

If you’re not familiar with how these two brands are related, read the Motrin Moms backstory (they have recently removed the apology from the corporate homepage), and the Kmart sponsored post story.

In reality, when these debacles happen, they are actually brand opportunities. several of the companies on my punk’d list have been able to turn this to their advantage.

Update: I just learned that Burger King has served a ‘cease and desist’ by tweeting for someone creating the ‘whoppervirgins’ account. It’s a going to be an interesting year.