Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

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  • Declaring Social Media Independence Not Always A Great Idea

    Declaring Social Media Independence Not Always A Great Idea

    We make a great deal out of saying how independent media is terrific. Independent media is the future. The usual stuff – and I don’t disagree, independence is a wonderful thing, the right and privilege to do pretty much whatever you want. No gatekeepers or superiors to answer to, no corporate bosses to kowtow to. As an independent media producer, you’re free, and that siren call lures lots of people to social media. Quit Your Day Job! and its ilk.

    Look back at our history. There were a number of occasions when the United States of America very nearly didn’t make it. The Whiskey Rebellion. The War of 1812. The Civil War.

    Independence is freedom, true. But independence also means the loss of a safety net. When you free yourself and leap off the cliff to freedom, you’d better be damn sure you’re strong enough to fly. You can have mentors and friends to help to some extent, but at the end of the day, you have to be strong enough to fly on your own.

    The same skills that eventually helped America become more than just a rebellious British colony are the skills that any independent media producer absolutely must have. Fiscal discipline, strategy, planning, and a boatload of luck all head up the list, as well as having something worth fighting for. Independence for independence’s sake is not enough.

    This is why I continue to happily work for a corporation, for the Student Loan Network. I know that there are people who value what I can do and believe I’d make a fine independent contractor, and if I had to play to only my strengths, I’d of course do that. But independence is a double edged sword, and I also know my limitations. I know what things I’m not good at, what things are weaknesses.

    I am happy to exchange absolute freedom for the comfort of not having to deal with bookkeeping, personnel, accounting, sales, contract negotiation, object oriented development, high quality customer service, utility management, janitorial services, vendor selection, and the billion other things that I don’t do when I go to work every day, that you don’t see in my YouTube videos and other social media efforts, but are just as important to the well-being and functioning of a company.

    Perhaps someday, I’ll consider making that jump, but if I do, I know for damn sure I’ll be ready to fly.

    If you’re thinking about taking that leap, about declaring your independence, recognize that independence carries with it tremendous responsibility. If you don’t know your weaknesses and have a strategy to address them, it’s going to be a short, short flight.

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  • Twitter has Pulver-ized me. Time to move to Plurk?

    Well, Twitter has flipped me the bird.

    Follow limit?

    When I sent in a support request, asking what this was about, a few folks pointed me to a wiki talking about rate limiting – i.e. preventing certain actions for a period of time, like queries to the API.

    However, after 4 days, things didn’t get better, so I opened a support case in as many ways as I could. Here was the response I got back:

    The follow limit is different for every profile, based on that profile’s activity. If you’ve hit the follow limit for your profile, you can un-follow some people in order to follow others. You can stop following some people to follow others, however, you wont be able to follow more people than you’re following currently.

    Twitter has Pulver-ized me – Jeff Pulver encountered the 5K ceiling with Facebook, and had to open a second account.

    For those of you who have followed back as many people as you could, be glad you did – that may be all you ever get.

    For those folks who view following back as important, I’m sorry to say that Twitter is now preventing that, at least for me.

    In the meantime, I’m going to go over to Plurk and play around there some. You’re welcome to join me off Twitter at the following:

    https://www.plurk.com/user/financialaidpodcast/

    https://friendfeed.com/cspenn

  • Transmitting Essence in Social Media

    Transmitting Essence in Social Media

    As I continue to learn more about digital photography and graduate from clueless hack with a nice camera to somewhat clueless hack with a nice camera, one of the lessons I’ve learned so far is that very often, representing the whole can be done through representing the essence.

    What the heck does that mean?

    Here’s a few photos from my recent trip to Block Island. The island itself is 6 miles long and conveying a sense of the culture and energy of the island is difficult in whole. Here’s a picture of the beach:

    Block Island 2008

    Tough part is, this is such a broad picture that it could be any beach in the world.

    This photo conveys a lot more about the spirit of the island:

    Block Island 2008

    Notice that it’s using fonts and layout that are reminiscent of a 1950s ice cream shop. Here’s another shot:

    Block Island 2008

    What I’m learning is that sometimes just a picture of something as seemingly inconsequential as a sign in a shop or a wood fence on a dune conveys a lot more feeling about the place than trying to take a giant panoramic photo of it all. The small picture brings out the essence of what’s different about the island, what sets it apart from the thousands of other islands in the Atlantic ocean.

    Likewise, look at your social media efforts. You can try to be as broad as possible, trying to keep up on every network, running around like crazy on every platform, but that ultimately makes you the equivalent a collection of wide-angle, subjectless photos. You see everything but nothing’s interesting. Sure, take a few panoramas at the start, but then dig in and find the essence of the kind of social media experience you want to have, and focus your efforts where you want to be. Find out what’s different.

    If there is one feature that distills the essence of social to you, what is it? That will tell you what network you need to be on. Is it presence? Twitter and its clones. Clubs and groups? Facebook. Exploration of people’s interests, one on one? MySpace. Career-focused, professional networking? LinkedIn. There are plenty of others, and other ways to perceive each of these networks – these are just how I use the properties.

    Pick the conferences and events you want to attend based on the essence of the experience you’ll get out of it. Want a “fishbowl” new media event? Podcasters Across Borders. Want to meet a never-ending flow of new people? PodCamp. Marketing? Look to MarketingProfs. Inspiration? TED. Each conference and event has an essence, and if that essence is what you want, then when it comes to making hard choices about what conference to attend, you’ll have a better idea of where to allocate scarce time and money.

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  • The evolution of marketing after search

    On the homepage for Facebook, a login form is ...

    Image via Wikipedia

    The evolution of marketing after search

    Search changed everything.

    In the world of advertising, before there was search, there was only interruption. Put as many ads as possible in as many places as possible in the hopes that when a consumer needed something, your ad would be there and they’d think of you first. Spend a fortune on brand so that when a consumer had a problem that your brand could solve, they’d choose you. During the pre-search age, this strategy worked, largely because there was no opportunity for anything better.

    Enter search. Search allowed consumers to indicate what they were interested in. Search allowed advertisers to know when a consumer was in the mood to buy, or at least in the mood to shop. Suddenly, instead of paying millions of dollars for impressions, advertisers could pay thousands of dollars for clicks, and the quality of the leads was better because the consumers had self-selected themselves as interested parties.

    So here we stand. Search rules the roost. Google’s fortunes are built on it, and everyone is trying to improve search or improve placement in search.

    Here’s the fundamental question: what comes next? Does search just get better, or is there a quantum leap that changes the game as much as search changed the game?

    I believe there is a change ahead, and we can already see it in various threads. It hasn’t come together yet, but it’s there and happening faster than you think.

    Predictive placement.

    You see, we know a lot of information. TONS of information. Consumers self-publish information in volumes that marketers could never accomplish. All of MySpace, all of Facebook, all of Twitter – all of this is self-published data, most of it public.

    Right now, we don’t yet have the computational capacity to do massive data correlation on an economical scale, though if I had to place a bet, I’d put my money on Google to do it first. Think about what that future might look like, though. We know products and services have seasonality, and we already have some data segmentation capabilities. Massive data correlation will let us aggregate all the consumer self-published data and slice it a billion different ways to determine what customers want, and when.

    Consider what massive data correlation might mean – a 19 year old female customer logs into, say, a superstore online, and signs in with their Facebook key (just as you do now with Facebook apps). Instantly, the superstore correlates the data in their Facebook profile with the megadatabase and knows that this consumer, who likes Phish, Liz Phair, CSI, and Lost, and is from the North Shore of Massachusetts is statistically likely, based on thousands of similar customer records, to want and need a student loan in three months’ time. Based on their demographic and psychographic data, the megadatabase knows that statistically, this consumer will probably need to borrow between 12,500 and14,300 in two increments, and based on previous purchase data, they’re likely to need their loan disbursements in the first week of September and the fourth week of January.

    The megadatabase makes these notations in a customer profile, sets reminders, and on the first Tuesday of September, Facebook, in concert with the superstore, sends the consumer a message offering them a student loan for $13,000 that can be disbursed by the Friday of that same week – because in the background, the megadatabase has already secured pre-approvals. The consumer is amazed and delighted that Facebook and the superstore knew exactly what they needed, exactly when they needed it, and instead of having to choose a lender, they just go with the lender that was there at precisely the right time with precisely the right offering. The advertisement will not seem out of place, either – because it’s precisely timed, it will appear to be content, just as now, an ad for a service that you need is content, not an ad.

    Sound farfetched? In the age of Google, in the age of social networking profiles with copious data, that day is much closer than you realize.

    Welcome to the future, where marketing is there for exactly what your wallet can bear, with exactly what you want, to take advantage of the buying impulse the moment you have it – all backed up by massive databases.

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  • Fireworks alternatives for the 4th of July

    A few news outlets are reporting bans on fireworks and cancelations of 4th of July exhibits – so what do you do in place of fireworks?

    Well, there’s always Diet Coke and Mentos. Seriously.

    • Diet Coke and Mentos will not start wildfires.
    • Diet Coke and Mentos will not make your clothes smell like cordite.
    • Diet Coke and Mentos will not accidentally remove limbs or blind you unless you’re really, really careless.
    • Diet Coke and Mentos are both consumable in case you change your mind.
    • Diet Coke and Mentos are mostly made in America.

    There will, of course, still be fireworks, too.

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  • Ultimate Search Engine Optimization

    What’s the ultimate search engine optimization?

    The same thing that everyone has been saying for years – content. Good content rules all.

    One of my Student Loan Network coworkers came back from an SES (Search Engine Strategies) conference yesterday with an interesting tidbit:

    Search engine algorithms are getting so sophisticated now that they’re starting to mimic human behavior.

    Think about that for a second. That means an eventual end to stupidity like doorway pages, keyword bait, and all the other tricks that the SEO industry has promoted over the years. An end to pointless linkbait, Digg articles that are misleading at best, and best of all, the endless flow of emails from folks saying, “Let’s exchange links between my crappy PPC (pills/porn/casino) site and your reputable little blog”.

    Good content. That means the skillsets for future SEO professionals will likely include:

    1. Excellent writing
    2. Audio engineering – because great video starts with great audio
    3. Video creation and editing
    4. Web design and development
    5. Graphic arts
    6. Marketing and sales skills

    Funny enough, that looks like a list of skills at any major media outlet. The evolution of “new media” and “social media” to just media continues.

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  • When do you need to re-learn the basics of social media?

    Facebook

    Image via Wikipedia

    My CEO, Joe Cronin, had a very interesting question as a follow up to the recent post on social media leaders.

    At what point do you need to go back and relearn the fundamentals? Things have changed so much in the last 10 years – the fundamentals are completely different. Anyone who learned them 5+ years ago is now doing things wrong – fundamentally, right??? They would have to be re-trained in new fundamentals???

    Yes and no. The fundamentals, the basics, always remain the same. The tools that we use to implement them change routinely and regularly, which is why it’s so important to read lots of blogs, participate on Twitter, and stay connected to your community – without that connection, you don’t have the eyes and ears of the group working for mutual benefit.

    I liken this to the martial arts. As a white belt, you learn a few basic techniques, you learn how to not get punched in the head, how to fall to the ground safely, and other core basics. As you advance up the ranks, you learn more techniques, newer techniques, more complicated techniques that require more skill, but the core principles remain the same – don’t get hurt. Even at the master levels of martial arts, the same fundamental basics are at work, just expressed differently than a white belt.

    The same is true in social media. You may just be getting started understanding your community through tools like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc., but the core basics of social media – community, connection, communication – remain the same. No matter what hot network you sign up for, no matter what the shiny object du jour is, the basics remain the same.

    You do need to constantly learn and gain competency in the tools you use to manage your social media community, of course. Applying ideas for promoting something on MySpace even from three months ago don’t work now, because the site changes constantly. The MP3 encoder you used for your podcast in 2005 should have evolved into something better for 2008. The basic underlying principle remains the same, however.

    If you understand the principles of social media, if you have underlying goals, metrics, and strategies, then no matter what tools come along, you’ll be able to apply your skills to the new stuff and make it effective for you as soon as you learn the tool. It’s a lot like driving a car. Once you understand the basics, it doesn’t matter whether you get behind the wheel of a Prius or a Ferrari – you can still get from point A to point B.

    A hat tip and a pile of links for my CEO as thanks for the great question.

    + Online Education Directory at Edvisors.com
    + Private student loans at AlternativeStudentLoan.com
    + Free scholarships at ScholarshipPoints.com

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  • Stupid simple marketing tip: hijack RSS scrapers

    Stupid simple marketing tip: hijack RSS scrapers

    Want to make your blog or podcast more effective? Hijack an RSS scraper!

    Definition: an RSS scraper is any web site that copies your RSS feed – your blog posts, your podcast show notes, etc. – and presents it on their site to appear to be original content.

    Instead of worrying about RSS scrapers repurposing your content, turn the tables on them and turn them into billboards for you. A few simple tips to get you started:

    1. Copy your blog post title into your post, and link back to the post or your blog’s homepage. Any scraper that repurposes the HTML will automatically provide a link back to the original. This is important because some scrapers copy only an excerpt of your posts.
    2. Use a plugin like aLinks to automatically create links to important keywords for you. For me, things like my employer, the Student Loan Network, my show, the Financial Aid Podcast, and my other online adventures are all things I want to have links to, but occasionally I forget. aLinks will link them up automatically, ensuring that RSS scrapers get piles of links to replicate, too.
    3. Add buttons to the bottom of every post containing action items. These buttons will in turn link back to things you want people to do, so when RSS scrapers replicate them, a person who clicks on the button to subscribe will get sent to your RSS feed, not the scraper’s. You can see this in action at the Financial Aid Podcast and Marketing Over Coffee. It’s important that this goes into the body of the post, not your blog’s template, because it’s the post contents that scrapers typically re-use.
    4. Include a text reminder as well, with your domain name in the text, such as, Get this and other articles from the source at www.ChristopherSPenn.com – and of course, link it up.

    As much as content creators hate RSS scrapers, especially when our content is repurposed to sell ads on someone else’s site, these scrapers are a reality that we can’t easily change. Instead of lamenting their existence, we can hijack them as best as we can to get their readers back to our stuff.

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  • 8 step guide to podcast marketing eBook and audiobook

    I’m pleased to offer you – completely for free – a combo set of the 8 step guide to podcast marketing basics eBook and accompanying audiobook. This is a super-short eBook (13 pages total) that asks 8 questions of you in your efforts to market your podcast. The answers you come up with will determine in large part just how effective your podcast marketing is.

    This is NOT a comprehensive guide to marketing anything – I’ve willfully left out a LOT of stuff, because this guide is intended to get the barebones basics in place before you do anything else.

    I’d love your feedback here about the guide, whether it’s helpful or not, what you make of it.

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  • I call for the immediate resignation of Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT)

    Christopher Dodd, U.S. Senator.

    Image via Wikipedia

    Senator Christopher Dodd, head of the Senate Banking Committee, is corrupt, plain and simple. Senator Dodd has sponsored a mortgage bailout bill in Congress to benefit mortgage lenders and took money from one of them – Countrywide – while putting up the legislation. Details, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal:

    On Tuesday, the very day he finally admitted knowing that Countrywide Financial regarded him as a “special” customer, the Connecticut Democrat also announced that he was bringing to the Senate floor a housing bailout sure to help lenders like Countrywide.

    How much will Countrywide benefit from Mr. Dodd’s rescue? The Senator’s plan allows mortgage lenders to dump up to $300 billion of their worst loans on to taxpayers via a new Federal Housing Administration refinancing program, provided the lenders are willing to accept 87% of current market value. The program will be most attractive to lenders and investors holding subprime and slightly-less-risky Alt-A loans made during the height of the housing bubble in 2006 and 2007.

    That legislation is bad enough. Here’s the kicker:

    Meanwhile, Mr. Dodd continues to insist that, though he knew he was a “special” Countrywide customer, he didn’t think he was getting any special financial benefit. But a 75,000 reduction in mortgage payments is no small matter for anyone living on a Senate salary of169,300. Why else would he be known around Countrywide as a “Friend of Angelo” – Angelo being Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo.

    Yesterday, nine Senate Republicans led by South Carolina’s Jim DeMint sent a letter asking Majority Leader Harry Reid to delay consideration of Mr. Dodd’s housing bailout bill in light of its benefits for Countrywide – and Countrywide’s benefits for Mr. Dodd. That’s an excellent idea, in addition to a Congressional and Justice Department probe of Countrywide, Fannie Mae and the favors they seem to have spread around Washington. American taxpayers need to understand more about who they’re being asked to bail out here, and why.

    Dodd, in effect, is going to charge American taxpayers – ME – 300 billion for a75,000 bribe. This is corruption, plain and simple.

    I call for the immediate resignation of Senator Dodd from Congress, and urge you to contact YOUR senators and representatives to ensure the mortgage bailout bill is voted down on arrival. Let lenders – and disclosure, I work for a student loan company – live with the bets they make in the marketplace.

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