Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

Author: Christopher S Penn

Social Media Dashboard – Bloomberg for Social Media

Social Media Dashboard – Bloomberg for Social Media

This morning started off thinking about Bloomberg’s wonderful but hideously expensive terminal, and how it gives you insight and also a dashboard to instantly know what’s going on in the markets. I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to have a Bloomberg for social media? Sure enough, a platform exists to manage all your social media in one place, and that’s iGoogle.

Click on the photo for a larger version.

Take a look at what we’ve got here.

Facebook, GMail, and Google Finance on the left, because if I’m doing this for a purpose, for, say, the Student Loan Network, it’s more than just conversation, it’s also understanding what’s happening in the bigger picture. Thus we see a public portfolio of companies in the student loan sector and broader market stuff. Not only does this keep on top of things for my client (the company I work for) but it also gives me the ability to be current when I participate in social networks.

In the middle, a mashup of Yahoo Pipes culling from Twitter Search on specific topics and keywords relevant to the industry. This can be anything at all, but for this, it’s all financial aid stuff, so I can stay on the pulse of financial aid as reported by customers and consumers. Below that, Feedburner for the podcast and customized Compete analytics to monitor what’s happening on my sites and my competitors’ sites.

On the right, Twitter replies to see if anyone needs my attention, and Digg to see what’s buzzy in the world. Obviously, swap this out for Reddit, Stumbleupon, Yahoo Buzz, or whatever your buzz-watcher of choice is.

This, incidentally, is social media with a purpose, highly focused for one specific task – being a financial aid expert in social media. It’s most assuredly not a fishbowl setup where I watch social media for social media’s sake.

Try it for your own vertical and niche, and see if it works for you!

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September 17, 2008
Want to know who's next to fall?

It’s simple.

Remember the SEC issuing a ban on naked short selling on July 18?

Here’s the list, in case you forgot:

Allianz SE
Bank of America Corp
Barclays PLC
BNP Paribas Securities Corp
Citigroup Inc
Credit Suisse Group
Daiwa Securities Group Inc
Deutsche Bank Group AG
Fannie Mae
Freddie Mac
Goldman Sachs Group Inc
HSBC Holdings Plc ADS
JPMorgan Chase & Co
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc
Merrill Lynch & Co Inc
Mizuho Financial Group Inc
Morgan Stanley
Royal Bank ADS
UBS AG

So far:

Allianz SE
Bank of America Corp – full
Barclays PLC – couldn’t handle Lehman, capital constrained?
BNP Paribas Securities Corp – couldn’t handle Lehman, capital constrained?
Citigroup Inc
Credit Suisse Group
Daiwa Securities Group Inc
Deutsche Bank Group AG
Fannie Mae – dead
Freddie Mac – dead
Goldman Sachs Group Inc
HSBC Holdings Plc ADS
JPMorgan Chase & Co
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc – dead
Merrill Lynch & Co Inc – swallowed
Mizuho Financial Group Inc
Morgan Stanley
Royal Bank ADS
UBS AG – in trouble?

The SEC more or less identified everyone it thinks is too weak to survive without government intervention.

Place your bets!

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September 16, 2008
Give me a minute, please?

In the next 10 minutes, someone will die of leukemia.

This is a good thing.

40 years ago the survival rate was 14% – or a death every 3 minutes.

Your support of me and my family as we’ve done the Light the Night walk the last 3 years has helped stretch out that time to 10 minutes.

Your support again this year could mean another minute.

Another minute means about 2,000 more people live another year, live to see their kids smile just a little longer, live to hug their mother just another day.

Another minute means a little more time to find the cure.

Can you afford to contribute right now to help find that minute?

If you can, please donate.

If not, I understand. Times are tight. Please at the very least Tweet and blog this post.

But if you can, thank you. Click here to donate.

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September 14, 2008
Why do we take unnecessary risks?

Watching the news, 40% of Galveston residents chose not to evacuate in advance of a storm that was rated, on an intensity energy scale, as 30% more powerful that Hurricane Katrina. The National Hurricane Center issued in its warning the very clear words “certain death”.

Yet 40% of residents stayed.

Why?

Ultimately, this points to an inability by people to assess risk correctly. This isn’t limited to storm chasing – it pervades all aspects of our society’s decision-making, which is why we have so many troubling problems today, from the mortgage crisis to quagmire wars.

Why can’t we assess risk effectively?

Part of it is education, and part of it is confusing risk and uncertainty. As I’ve mentioned before, risk is a mathematical expression of probability. There’s a 40% chance of rain today. There’s a 6.8% interest rate on this student loan (because interest rates represent a blend of profit-making and risk-taking).

Uncertainty is a lack of information. You can’t put math on something you don’t know.

As hurricanes approach land, uncertainty fades away and risk becomes quantifiable. Computer models for Hurricanes Ike and Gustav get reliable about 3 days out; at 5 days out, they’re still shaky. There’s still more uncertainty than risk. Once they’re 3 days out, we can assess the risk of a hurricane making landfall with greater certainty, as we did with Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike.

When people make decisions based on uncertainty rather than risk, they tend to choose behavior that is more reckless than a situation would warrant. For example, 40% of Galveston residents chose to stay. Given the uncertainty of the storm’s actual damage potential, they opted to gamble that it wouldn’t be as bad as NHC made it out to be.

When you face risk, you know what your risk tolerance is. There’s a small but non-zero chance you could die every day. You opt to take the risk of getting up in the morning and going about your affairs because the statistical likelihood of you dying is relatively small.

If you face a situation that is uncertain rather than risky, opt for caution rather than recklessness. You may be right, but if you don’t have information that can quantify your risk with a relatively small amount of uncertainty, you’re more likely to benefit from caution.

And for heaven’s sake, when the NHC says certain death – words they don’t use lightly – please believe them and run like hell.

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September 13, 2008
The best security system in the world, post 9/11

I get on a plane this afternoon to head back to Boston.

A few people have asked whether I feel anything about flying on the anniversary of 9/11.

Heck no.

We now have the greatest security system in the world on our planes. No, not the TSA. Not Homeland Security. All of that is very expensive window dressing that does nothing to improve our security.

No, our greatest security system on our planes is the understanding that hijackers will kill everyone, and as a result, the passengers have nothing to lose by resisting.

Put simply, if you try to hijack a plane for any reason in the United States of America, the passengers are going to beat the living snot out of you and then mummify you with whatever they have on hand.

We could eliminate the TSA tomorrow and still be just as safe, if not safer. Heck, instead of the billions spent on airport luggage screening, spend $3 per seat and just put billy clubs next to the air sickness bags.

This is the America I know and love – don’t mess with the bull. You’ll get the horns.

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September 11, 2008
The market crashes, turns to ashes

“The market crashes, turns to ashes that you’re dancing on while some fat lady cues up for a song.” – Matthew Ebel, Better Off Dead

Well, folks, the great unraveling is picking up pace, with more banks failing, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac taking up hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in a bailout, and companies like Lehman Brothers essentially saying “Everything for sale, cheap! We need cash fast!”

What does this mean for you, the new media professional, the marketing professional?

It means that flash cash for new media is dwindling fast. Companies can’t afford Bubble 2.0 any more.

You’d better have a revenue stream that isn’t dependent on just advertising – MarketingVox recently cited sharp declines in expenditures.

You’d better have a revenue stream that isn’t dependent on discretionary income – that’s going away real fast.

You’d better have a revenue stream that isn’t dependent on corporate largesse – budgets simply aren’t there.

So what should you be looking for?

Look for pay-for-performance revenue streams like affiliate marketing that pay a cut of the sale. Take a look at Shareasale, for example. (Full disclosure: PAID link that supports the Financial Aid Podcast.) As long as you make affiliate publishers money, you make money.

Make premium subscriptions for irreplaceable content. Your content has got to be so valuable, so top-notch, that it’s no longer discretionary spending, but mandatory spending.

Above all else, if you’re not building your database, you’re dead meat.

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September 10, 2008
What happened to the other 98%?

Here’s a vital question I have from a recent discussion with my CEO at the Student Loan Network:

What happened to the other 98%?

We talk a lot, especially in marketing, about click through, conversion, and retention rates. Invariably, these rates are small fractions in all of the discussions I’ve had. 1% click through rate, 10% open rate, etc.

When you turn these metrics around, they’re a little more depressing.

90% did not open rate.
99% did not click through rate.
95% did not buy something rate.
96% did not volunteer rate.
94% did not complete the form rate.

As a marketer, that looks appalling, so we state things in the positive – ooh, that cold calling campaign landed a 2% conversion rate.

What the heck is happening to the other 98%? Didn’t open? Why not? Didn’t click? Why not?

Often we talk in marketing about increasing market share or conversion by a few percentage points.

Why don’t we ever talk about increasing conversion by an order of magnitude?

If you were in charge of a marketing campaign, how would you get the did X/did not X rates to switch places?

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September 9, 2008
The blind leading the blind

From MSNBC’s homepage:

Anyone from President Bush’s administration “tutoring” someone else on foreign policy is a lot like career binge alcoholics tutoring high school students on responsible drinking.

September 3, 2008
How To Monetize Your Social Media Outlet

How To Monetize Your Social Media Outlet

In a variation of a Financial Aid Podcast blog post this morning, here’s a brief economics 101 explanation of how you can monetize your blog, podcast, Twitter lifestream, or other social media outlet.

Economics 101

Supply and demand are inversely related. When demand exceeds supply, you have to pay others to take your stuff. When supply exceeds demand, other people pay you for your stuff. Value comes from demand. Here’s a simple monetization chart:

If your social media outlet is in high demand, you can get paid for it. If your social media outlet is not in high demand, you have to pay others to take your stuff. If supply and demand are in equilibrium, you’re at totally free.

This is why advertising is the main method of monetization for most social media. Your social media outlet in and of itself has very little value, sorry to say. What has value is your audience. They’re the commodity that you have to sell, and you do sell them, whether or not you want to believe you do. You can sell the actual audience in the form of renting or selling an email list, or more likely, you sell access to your audience in the form of endorsement, sponsorship, or ads. Your audience is the value to the advertiser, and in turn, your content is the value for your audience.

See the entry on the chart where it says your blog, podcast, and twitter stream? See how it’s actually in the you pay others section? It’s true. Statistically, you pay others for your content. You may say that you’re blogging for free or giving away your content, but the reality is that you’re paying others, in hosting fees, bandwidth, in domain name purchases, in your time and energy to create and market your content.

You’re paying others.

Social Media Metrics That Matter

How do you know when you’ve become a true social media success?

When everyone pays you.

Advertisers pay for access to your audience. Your audience pays for access to your content – perhaps in cash, perhaps in inbound links, perhaps in word of mouth marketing on your behalf. Major media outlets pay in time and energy to cover what you’re talking about.

Most important of all, checks arrive in the mail or by direct deposit that are sufficiently large enough for you to meet your expenses and then some. At the end of the day, whether or not you can afford to eat and put a roof over your head is the only metric that matters.

How To Monetize

How do you get there? Back to the chart.

You’re fighting an uphill battle if you think you can reduce overall supply, so you have to be a specialist, an expert in something that is in short supply. Ideally, it should be something in short supply but high demand – like insider stock tips, or financial aid information.

As I’ve said in the past, I’m not a podcaster. I’m a financial aid expert who has a podcast.

So let’s assume you’ve got basic supply solved – you’ve found a niche, a place where there’s market demand for your supply. Then it’s up to you to market your content. Marketing, as I’ve said in the past, is about sharing ideas, which is a kind and gentle way of saying marketing is creating demand for your ideas.

Marketing is the creating of demand for your supply.

The more you effectively market, the more demand there will be for your content. That in turn will drive audience growth, which you can monetize directly (audience pays) or indirectly (advertisers pay), or both.

As my friend Whitney Hoffman says, you can’t outrun Adam Smith and the laws of economics. If you’re currently being paid for social media, enjoy that you are, and realize that if your monetization model doesn’t conform to the basic laws of supply and demand, your model is not sustainable and sooner or later, the money will stop.

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September 2, 2008
SEO more important than ever with Google Chrome

Google’s announcement of Chrome, their new open-source browser, was greeted with a relatively lukewarm reception online today.

Here’s the part that a lot of folks missed, from the Chrome comic book. (yes, a comic book)

Get it?

If your SEO efforts aren’t up to par, Google’s ignoring you in the testing of their browser, too.

If their browser achieves any level of success, Google will test against your site – if you rank.

Now this part is the gem, the part that marketers NEED to pay attention to, or ignore at their peril.

If users think your site is worth remembering, Chrome will do it for them.

If your site ranks for your keywords, Chrome will suggest it – IN the browser itself. No need to be using Google suggest.

Seth Godin is fond of saying that if you make your content remarkable, you win.

Google Chrome now says if you make your content remarkable, they’ll market it for free to their users directly in the OmniBox.

We’ll see how this new browser does, but marketers – pay heed.

Google Chrome debuts September 2.

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September 2, 2008

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