Category: New media

Social Media and Business Ethics

Prior to my involvement in social media and new media, customers were exactly that – just customers. Rows in a database, indexed by various criteria, points of data making a beautiful line, so to speak. As an online business, my company, the Student Loan Network, never had to really deal with customers all that much, since almost all transactions were digital, almost all were automated, and almost all were without incident. Having a customer base that was a complete commodity also made business decisions relatively easy – send newsletters and notices X number of times a month, accept X percentage unsubscribe rates, calculate X percentage revenue from the clickstream.

To be perfectly candid, we never really had to think about the customer as a human being.

Sure, we said we did, just like everyone else, but if you had asked me off the top of my head to name three customers without opening a SQL command line, I’d have given you a blank look.

Social media changed all that. From the day I got my first piece of feedback as a podcaster, social media changed how I, and how the Student Loan Network, interacts with its customers. Suddenly, at the other end of the command line output, there were human beings I knew by name, and even call friends. I’ve had lunch with a few.

More importantly, when I go to write a newsletter, a blog post, or an episode of the Financial Aid Podcast, I have to consciously think about what level of quality I’m creating, about what value I’m creating, because it’s no longer just about percentage clicks from the clickstream, it’s about making sure that when Ricky, Fernando, Leah, Nolan, James, and many others get the content I create, they get some value out of it.

Sure, some days will be better than others, but I know that personally knowing customers makes a huge difference in how you approach your business. Being friends with customers radically changes how you do business, because ultimately, if you’re a person of sound ethics and morals, you don’t willfully screw your friends over. It’s the same general concept as requiring the children of elected officials to serve in the infantry of a country’s armed forces – there are real, personal consequences to every decision you make.

This is one of the many upsides of social media – the ability to transform your business into a human enterprise again, if you’re willing to be adventurous and take the risk of letting employees truly and openly communicate with customers and develop real relationships.

I saw this article in USA Today – community colleges, many of which are commuter schools, are cutting classes, typically on Fridays, to help students save money on gas.

Here’s the question I have: why wouldn’t professors start assigning distance learning opportunities in class? Let’s say you’re taking a course on biology, an intro course. Instead of having a Friday class, instead of canceling a Friday class, the professor assigns MIT Professor Dr. Graham Walker’s Introduction to Biology lecture from iTunesU as the guest lecture of the week. Students would still be responsible for the contents of the lecture and its contents would be fair game for exams.

Now, I know what some folks will say – community college students aren’t necessarily the most affluent students around, nor are they all likely to have high speed Internet access. Instead of a textbook, or in addition to a textbook, include the 149 iPod nano, and have a few computers in the classroom with the content pre-loaded. Students without a home computer and broadband can sync their iPods in class or after class for the distance learning day.

With gasoline at4/gallon and so much good, free content online, the case for distance learning to substitute for lecture-style classes grows stronger by the day.

I’ve been looking again at MySpace, as a recent blog post detailed. One of the things I’ve been looking at is the depth of engagement. Is a friend relationship enough to market on? What is the value of a MySpace friendship?

Over the last five days, I’ve been sending out 200 messages a day or so to my MySpace friends, advertising the Financial Aid Podcast. It’s themed pretty basically:

• Thanks for being a friend of mine and of my show.
• Here’s three links to iTunes, Google Reader, and the site.
• Please subscribe.

How’s it been going?

I started with a Feedburner number of about 1,000. The show had been static around that number for a while, a couple of months at least. Today? Hit a new record – the last four out of five days.

Ask. Ask those in your network to get connected, ask them to take action, ask them to be more involved in your community efforts. If you don’t ask, you definitely won’t receive.

What is worth paying for?

In the world of an information economy, information is effectively free. This, of course, has broad implications for anyone generating intellectual property, such as writers, musicians, and media makers.

Effectively free means this: it is possible to mass produce and mass distribute information at near zero cost, laws and artificial scarcity notwithstanding. If you create a piece of music and record it, once the music is in an MP3 file, the distribution cost is near zero.

If you write a book and the book is released digitally in a PDF, the distribution cost is near zero.

Yes, lawyers can serve cease & desist and lawsuits, but once released, the information tends to remain free, if not necessarily in legally approved distribution channels.

In a world where information is effectively free, where does value come from?

Look to Google and Search Engine Optimization for the answer. In the world of SEO, there are catalogs upon catalogs of tricks you can do to achieve higher rankings when someone Googles for a search term related to your site. How does Google value things in a world where information is free?

By measuring things that are not free.

Google values, for example, domain names. A domain name for any kind of sustained campaign costs money. It is not free, and therefore Google assigns it more weight than, say, what you name individual files on your web site.

Google values inbound links from sites not under your control. Why? Because it takes effort and time – of which money is a proxy for – to establish a lot of inbound links. Inbound links from certain top level domains such as .gov and .edu have more value than inbound links from domains such as .com, .net, and .org, because .gov and .edu domain names are restricted, and the content managers of sites bearing those domains tend to be more selective about who they link to.

Google devalues things that are free, easy, things that require little effort and no commitment. Long strings of file names and directory names carry less value these days than in the early days of search engine optimization.

What things in your world are of value that cannot be digitally replicated? For musicians, their core skill is not the music, the data. It’s the ability to create and perform music, and so the digital files, the recordings of the music may be free, but the performance of concerts are not, nor can the live concert experience be replicated. The sale of a CD is almost a souvenir, a proxy for having been at the live concert event.

For artists, a digital photo can be replicated, but a personalized, autographed print cannot be, at least not easily, quickly, or cheaply.

For people in new media, while the creation of media itself is easily replicated, the community cannot be, as recently discussed in the sale of Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron’s Twitter account. Community and word of mouth are fundamentally built on trust, which is a non-tangible, non-replicable resource. That’s why, as technology and information continue to blossom, things built on assets that are not free, easy, or fast will continue to grow in value – trust, sincerity, honesty, authenticity, experience, emotion.

This is why conferences are so expensive – you can’t replicate face time with digital intermediation. Even with video chat, you’re still not getting the full experience.

If you’re trying to figure out whether a new media outlet, deal, opportunity, or platform is worth your time, effort, and money, evaluate its value based on things you can’t digitally reproduce. You will quickly find what’s worth paying for.

Why Old Media Matters More Than Ever

There’s a persistent dangerous meme in new media, the idea that old media (television, radio, and newspapers) is irrelevant and dying. It’s not. In fact, if anything, old media is more relevant than ever.

Why?

In the old days – and by that I mean pre-1996 – old media was the only game in town if you wanted to reach a large audience. Newspapers and magazines covered print, television and movies brought the moving image to large audiences, and radio gave us music.

The Internet changed a lot of things, including effectively limitless channels of distribution, where every web page was a newspaper and every audio stream was a radio station. People – including myself – predicted the death of old media. As the barriers to content creation and distribution got lower, everyone could be a media producer.

Therein lies the problem.

When everyone can be a media producer, when a certain percentage of the population is producing media, it gets really hard to find media worth consuming.

A popular new media meme is that 99% of people just consume media and only 1% create it. With an estimated 1 billion people online, that’s 10 million media producers. Anyone who owns a cable television knows that it can take the better part of half an hour just to go through 900 channels, much less 10 million.

So what does this mean for old media? Instead of bouncers keeping out the masses, old media is evolving to become a content filter, finding decent stuff in new media and using its distribution networks to take the best stuff and bring it mainstream. The reason this model works is that advertisers provide an automatic filtering mechanism – if an old media outlet shows enough crap, people will stop tuning in to that show, to that channel, and advertising dollars will follow.

To keep advertisers – who pay the bills – happy, old media outlets have to find good stuff and present it. I’ve had this experience many times over the past year, as old media outlets have found the Financial Aid Podcast and featured it in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, BusinessWeek, and US News & World Report. Find good stuff and present it, and the advertisers are happy.

Those old media outlets who insist on the bouncer model are indeed headed for the pages of history. Those old media outlets who are adapting and changing will become more relevant than ever, as advertisers trust their editorial judgement – something a lot of new media producers lack, for good or ill.

Does this matter to new media producers? Absolutely. I speak from personal experience that while Google juice is great, and position #1 for a popular search result is wonderful, the traffic from the New York Times is equally great. The smartest new media producers are the ones figuring out how to successfully marry old and new media distribution outlets together to create the best of both worlds.

What’s your old media strategy?

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I had an epiphany of sorts in the shower.

What a lot of new media folks talk about – audience building, impressions, and the dreaded M word, monetization – is not marketing.

Marketing is the sharing of ideas.

So what is all the stuff we in new media talk about? Sales. Whether it’s pay per click ads, podcast subscriptions, blog readers, speaking gigs, whatever your metric is around getting someone to take action, that’s sales.

Marketing is the sharing of ideas.

Sales is the conversion of ideas into actions.

It’s the job of marketing to share ideas with the audience, to help them to understand what they’re missing out on, what value is awaiting them. It’s all about the content. Content is king, so the cliche goes.

It’s the job of sales to turn those ideas into actions. Create the path for people to take. Make it easy for people to do what you want them to do. Tell them what you want them to do. Click here. Subscribe now. Call the comment line. Leave a comment on the blog. Upload your webmail contacts. That’s all sales – do, do, do.

Once the sale is over, it’s back to marketing, back to sharing. Marketing takes over and reinforces to the audience that the action they took was the right one. Marketing continues to provide value upon value until the customer is so enamored of what you’re doing that they are compelled to share with their friends – and they become your salesforce and marketing team.

Share. Act. Share. Repeat.

This is especially relevant because in many ways, I think we’re reading the wrong books.

Most of my friends in new media are brilliant people. Smart, insightful, good at creating ideas and sharing them. Most of them also wish to be more, do more, achieve more, and this is where the disconnect is. There’s a gap between sharing and acting. Go to any blog and figure out what the action the blogger wants you to take is, and how easy it is to find. Get out your stopwatch, go to any podcaster’s web site, start the clock, and see how long it takes you to subscribe.

Folks like Seth Godin, Chris Anderson, and the marketing folks are perfectly okay. They’re sharing the ideas, and they’re a source for our own inspiration.

Note, however, when you ask any prominent blogger, podcaster, networker, etc. about their bookshelves, they never mention Tom Hopkins, Zig Ziglar, Ira Hayes, Dan Kennedy, Brian Tracy, etc. They never mention the sales books, the sales guys who can help get you from idea to action. Once the customer knows who you are and is willing to make a commitment, you as the new media outlet have to change gears and guide your customer, your audience, into action.

If you want people to do more with your new media outlet, complement your marketing knowledge with sales knowledge, and you’ll blow past the competition in a heartbeat.

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I have 2 SocialThing Invites. Want one?

Here’s what you must do. Get THREE people to register for PodCamp NYC, and in the “how did you hear about PodCamp NYC” section, have them put YOUR email address (munged is okay, like cspenn at gmail dot com) and the word socialthing. Example:

How did you hear about PodCamp NYC? Heard from cspenn at gmail dot com / socialthing

First two people who refer THREE signups to PodCamp NYC gets the invite.

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Where do the veterans of new media go?

A theme that has cropped up in discussion lately about PodCamp is this:

Where do the veterans go to learn new stuff?

PodCamp, BarCamp, NewBCamp, BootCamp – there are so many conferences, sessions, and opportunities for new folks, from Zero to Podcasting at PodCamp Toronto to all of NewBCamp/BootCamp, and it’s heartening to see the new media community welcoming with open arms anyone who wants to learn. New media’s future hinges on the continued generosity of the community, and I hope PodCamp especially continues to be one of the welcome wagons.

That said, where do the veterans go to take their game to the next level? Where can they turn?

To be honest, there isn’t anything for them, not because of a lack of desire, but because being on the frontier means you’re responsible for your own training, your own innovation. You can get together with friends and share what you’ve created, but by and large, innovation is your responsibility.

Sure, I think it would be fantastic to have a 400-level track at PodCamps, and PodCamp organizers would do well to remember that all levels of skill welcome means all levels, including the occasional rocket scientist/trail blazer, or else that occasional rocket scientist has a diminished incentive to contribute.

But beyond that, the innovators are on their own. In the martial arts, one of my teachers, Ken Savage (of the Winchendon Martial Arts Center), compares our head teacher, Mark Davis (of the Boston Martial Arts Center) to a trailblazer at the head of our line, machete in hand, cutting a path so we don’t have to.

Being a trailblazer can mean recognition, thanks, and even fame, but it also means you’re the first guy or gal to step on the snakes, scorpions, and other delights the jungle has in store for you. Veterans of new media need to remember that as well – if you want to continue being a leader, the path never gets easier. Same scorpions, different day.

Where do I personally go to learn? I look at tons of different sources for idea components. For example, I got a thank you email from someone on LinkedIn that had a great idea component in it, something that I’m going to combine with a few other ideas and make even better. New ideas, new insights are all around, if only we’re paying enough attention to grab them as they whiz by. Ideas come from arbitrage – I’ve often quoted Mark Davis’ signature expression, study something old to learn something new. Finally, ideas come from just trying something, watching it flop, finding the parts that did work, and refining it until it does work.

As Thomas Edison said, “I haven’t failed 10,000 times. I have just found 10,000 ways not to make a lightbulb.”

Where do YOU get your ideas? Where do YOU go to learn?

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For those who didn’t head out to PodCamp Toronto this weekend, another UnConference launched in New England – NewBCamp. Very closely aligned in concept (though no connection) to PodCamp Pittsburgh‘s BootCamp PGH, NewBCamp was created by Sara Streeter, a student at Johnson & Wales University, to achieve the dual goals of introducing new people to the various technologies available and to energize the Providence area technology scene with the power of new media.

I went to NewBCamp to share a little and see someone else’s take on the UnConference idea, and I’m pleased to say that NewBCamp is very much the same energy, enthusiasm, and excitement that embodies the PodCamp series of events. I think the Providence area has got its own UnConference series, and it’ll be interesting to see if NewBCamp and BootCamp can work together, since they’re so closely aligned.

Even a veteran can learn lots of new stuff, and I’m certainly no exception. Sara’s session, Speed Mentoring, is an absolute gem of a session that I would love to incorporate into PodCamps. It’s like Speed Dating, but instead of relationships, a few people self-designate as mentors in specific topics, and then folks in the room can cluster towards topics that they’re interested in or that they need help in. Those small, focused discussions were revelatory in their own right, but I think the Speed Mentoring concept is a nice twist to conversation.

I had the opportunity to fine-tune and present a more story-like version of my New Media 101 session. Matthew Ebel was kind enough to stream it on uStream.tv, and recorded part of it here:

A full version with better audio will be produced and released soon.

The day concluded with a concert at AS220 in Providence with Matthew Ebel. Over 90 minutes, Matthew took us all on a fantastic musical tour of his work, including a new version of probably my all time favorite song of his, I Will Wait For You.

NewBCamp was a fantastic experience, and I hope to see it flourish and accomplish its twin missions of introducing new people to technology and bringing a boost to the Providence technology and new media sectors.

“The sun’s coming up in the morning, and I’ll be there…”

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I got a promotional email from Big Machine Media today cc’ed to a list of 340 podcasters and bloggers, promoting their musicians.

Good try, gang.

Look, a lot has already been said about blogger outreach by better minds than mine.

Here’s where this campaign really fell flat.

First, please, please, please if you’re going to do outreach, at least BCC your list. I’d actually prefer that you “go pro” and use a mailing list service like Blue Sky Factory to manage your mailings, so that you have comprehensive blacklist and other filtering at your fingertips. On those occasions when I need to do outreach, I set up a segmentation that says, “Never, ever send this email to the same address twice”.

Second, put an obvious, functional opt-out in the email.

Third, if you’re going to pitch me, PITCH me. Show me why you deserve an ounce of my time or attention. The email I got had a relatively decent subject line, but a really poor payload. This company wants to promote their musicians to me. Fine and good, I love promoting musicians (like Rich Palmer, Matthew Ebel, Anji Bee, Rebecca Loebe, Black Lab, Natalie Gelman, Rayko KRB, and countless others) and I love hearing new, independent music, but the pitch in this message was about as exciting as getting my grocery bill via email, which is to say not at all. (perhaps you have exciting groceries? I do not)

What would make an effective pitch to me? Well, you could send me a link to an MP3 ( <= free MP3! ) so that I could hear what you have to offer – that’d be a start. Tell me WHY your musicians are so good, and whether or not musicians like to be compared to others, tell me at least who they kind of sound like – for example, Matthew Ebel sounds like the love child of Billy Joel and Ben Folds with a dash of William Shatner from time to time, and an ounce or two of John Mayer.

Marketing music is difficult under the best circumstances, and lord knows I’ve made more than my share of missteps. At least maybe this list of basics will help music marketers who WANT to do outreach be a little more effective.

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