RSS, Blogging & Podcasting-Opportunities to Connect People in New Ways

RSS, Blogging and Podcasting Opportunities to connect people in new ways. 1

The Big Idea: Communicating with Your Customers • Engage in the conversation: There is no substitute for a genuine focus on customers. Give them a chance to hear about your business or aspects of it and allow them and even invite them to respond. If they are engaged with you in a human to human manner, they will want to support your business. • Indirect Marketing: Provide value to listeners, readers or watchers. Let them experience the value you can bring as an individual or business through the content. You can market yourself and build a community around your business. Your customers are already a community, reaching out in this way allows you to have more interaction with them and potential new customers. • A Silent Sales Force: Adds tools with a global reach to your sales toolkit. If customers like the content, they will refer friends. It’s word of mouth with a global reach. 2

What I’m Going To Talk About Today •Stepping Back •Let’s Talk Blogging A Bigger Context How the social media explosion has enabled people to use tools like blogs and podcasts to connect with people and share information in new ways. Who, Why, How A breakdown of who blogs, why you should join the conversation and how to get started. •But What If •Step It Up With Something Bad Podcasting Happens The Podcast Risks Things to consider before getting started and resources to get you It’s good to look at all angles of this before jumping in with both there. feet..... •Publishing •Resources A Bigger Context More on all of this I’ve heard the term, but I don’t know what the relevance of RSS is Books and links to help you get more information and get started to me. with your blog or podcast. 3

Stepping Back A Bigger Context How the social media explosion has enabled people to use tools like blogs and podcasts to connect with people and share information in new ways. 4

A Bigger Context • Social Media Explosion • YouTube (video sharing) Flickr (photo sharing) LinkedIn (my space for adults, etc.) • Sharing speciﬁc sets of information with chosen groups of people or the public in general is easy • Simple distribution, lots of reasons to ‘connect’ 5

A Bigger Context Web 2.0 Companies • Companies popping up all over the place in this new market. • Having a presence is important. • A perfect storm • Technology • Culture • Shared Values • Sharing • Open • Networked 6

A Bigger Context-How It’s Affecting Business • Books that help to frame the emergence of connecting. • ClueTrain Manifesto came out with radical ideas about how companies needed to engage in conversation with customers. • Technology enabled conversations • Markets are conversations • What Blogs and Podcasts do enable • Blogs are easy to set up. • Blogs allow conversations (when comments are on) • Conversations happen with or without the blog • Be part of the conversation • Naked Conversations • started as a blog and became a book. • builds on ClueTrain and shows through a series of interviews how blogs can change the way you talk to your customers. 7

Convergence • Technology Enables New Opportunities to Engage With Customers • Business Must Evolve to Meet Customer Expectations • Sounds great, what’s the downside? ? 8

But What If Something Bad Happens Risks It’s good to look at all angles of this before jumping in with both feet..... 9

Before I Start...What about the FUD Factor? • What if people are negative? Won’t I give away my biggest secrets? How will we pay for this, is it worth it? Won’t I give my competitors an advantage? What about disgruntled employees saying bad things in public? • Here’s what the CEO of Sun Microsystems says: Blog Post on March 28, 2007: I Don't Believe in Walled Gardens from Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog by Jonathan Schwartz (For those interested in Sun's organization charts (which are, in effect, an expression of my priorities), what's below is the message I sent to all of Sun earlier today. Keeping everyone up to speed on where we're headed is a big part of my job (I'd argue, one of my biggest) - so if you're interested in such things, read on. (And yes, I thought about simply posting this on my blog this morning - but I didn't want folks inside Sun ﬁnding out about an organizational change via an external source - thus, the courtesy of an internal email ﬁrst.) ______________________________________ To: All of Sun From: Jonathan Schwartz Subject: Announcing a new business, and a new leader (or two) I announced a few organizational changes this morning, and I want to be sure everyone hears directly from me about my motivations and expectations. As you know, we've opened a world of opportunity by ensuring Solaris is available on Dell, HP and IBM hardware. We can now talk to what were traditionally non-Sun customers. Similarly, our moves to build an x64 systems business, and bring Linux to the SPARC platform, have made us relevant to non-Solaris customers. As of today, I'm seeking to repeat that effect with our Microelectronics, or silicon investments. I'd like to see our chip business grow beyond Sun's own systems, and more broadly in the marketplace.................................. 10

Before I Start...What about the FUD Factor? • What if people are negative? Won’t I give away my biggest secrets? How will we pay for this, is it worth it? Won’t I give my competitors an advantage? What about disgruntled employees saying bad things in public? • If an organization is open, addressing these things publicly might not be such a negative thing. • Negative feedback: This is good. You can identify the problem and ﬁx it. Giving away biggest secrets: Be smart and tell your employees to be smart in their communication too. Paying for this? Don’t force the activity, some people will want to do it and it will fee natural, others will not be interested. Competitors and advantage: Starting the conversation is better. Be active and engage with your competition. Disgruntled employees: What you put on the Internet stays around. If an employee is negative, they may have relevant feedback. To date, occurrences of this have been so minimal that the numbers of those incidences are considered insigniﬁcant. 11

Before I Start...How Sun has faced the FUD • What if people are negative? Won’t I give away my biggest secrets? How will we pay for this, is it worth it? Won’t I give my competitors an advantage? What about disgruntled employees saying bad things in public? • Trust, Common Sense, Freedom • Here’s how Sun Microsystems has dealt with some of these situations: • People were negative but they were respectful: Jonathan apologized to a startup. • Giving away biggest secrets: Shared ofﬁcial Sun internal email with the world • Paying for this? 10% of the workforce blogs at Sun. They blog because they enjoy it. Some of it is very useful to the business but it is also a great opportunity for an employee. • Competitors and advantage: Sun may have an advantage as they started this several years ago. The competition has been getting involved in this space but does not have the same level of participation. That many more conversations are happening with Sun employees and who knows what that could bring to the business over time. • What about disgruntled employees: This hasn’t really happened. In fact, when there were some layoffs last year, the invitation was extended to them to continue blogging on a Sun blog property. A site was created just for that at community.sun.com 12

Before I Start...How Open? • April Edition of Wired Magazine calls it ‘Radical Transparency’. • “Google is not a search Engine. It’s a reputation management system. By enhancing transparency companies can manage their images as never before.” • You can’t hide anything anymore anyway. • You can’t go ‘open’ halfway. 13

Before I Start...Can’t Keep A Secret Anyway... • Recent Examples of Secrets being exposed • Sony embedding spyware rootkit on CDs that made computer’s that played the CDs vulunerable • Microsoft paying people to buff up their wikipedia entry • Diebold voting machine being shown to be vulnerable by a college professor (300,000 YouTube views) 14

Transparency - A Proactive Response • Examples of Transparency Conversations are happening. It is better as a business to be involved in that conversation than to be separate from it. • Amazon product ratings. The customers participate in telling the story about the product. This is a much more trusted network of writers than any marketing material could ever be. It is authentic and that is what people want to know before they buy. Ebay Value comes from the transparency of the community. If someone sold something and didn’t deliver, you can see it on the site. JetBlue and YouTube Microsoft’s Channel9 Sun Microsystems CEO and almost 10% of Sun’s workforce voluntarily blog at blogs.sun.com/jonathan and blogs.sun.com 15

Considerations •How Open Am I/How Open is My Business? •What am I comfortable sharing? Where are the lines? •I’m ready for this, let’s get started.... 16

Publishing What is RSS? I’ve heard the term, but I don’t know what the relevance of RSS is to me. 17

What is RSS? • RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication • RSS is a delivery mechanism • RSS can be received in different ways applications browsers email phones (SMS) network devices more...... 18

RSS stands for really simple syndication • But what does that mean? • Blogging-delivered via RSS (Feeds) • Podcasting-delivered via RSS (Feeds) • Enables ‘Come to Me Web’ http://www.personalinfocloud.com/2006/01/the_come_to_me_.html • The content comes to the person instead of the person visiting the web site. It’s much more focused on the person. In the future, RSS feeds could be targeted based on location of the individual. • Delivering an RSS feed essentially means you are becoming a publisher. 19

RSS: Message sent, but how is it received? • RSS Readers • Desktop Applications Netnewswire Feedreader: http://www.feedreader.com/ Feedreader 20

RSS: Message sent, but how is it received? • RSS Readers • Online Applications Google Reader Bloglines.com my.yahoo.com Google Reader 21

RSS: Message sent, but how is it received? • RSS Readers • Browsers Flock Firefox plugin: Sage http://sage.mozdev.org/ Flock 22

RSS: Message sent, but how is it received? • RSS Readers • Network Devices 23

Let’s Talk Blogging Who, Why, How A breakdown of who blogs, why you should join the conversation and how to get started. 24

Who?---141 Million Americans Online • Internet Activities: • http://www.pewinternet.org/trends/Internet_Activities_1.11.07.htm •39 % Read someone else!s online journal, web log or blog (January 2006) •8 % Create or work on your own online journal or weblog (February-April 2006) •12 % Download a podcast so you can listen to it or view it at a later time (August 2006) • Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project Tracking Surveys, November – December 2005 and February – April 2006. For sample based on bloggers, N=308. Margin of error is ±7%. For sample based on internet users, n=4,753, margin of error is ±2%. 25

Who Are The Bloggers • Bloggers: Summary of Findings at a Glance • New voices to the online world. • Only 11% of bloggers say they focus mainly on government or politics. • Young, evenly split between women and men, and racially diverse. • Relatively small groups of bloggers view blogging as a public endeavor. • Creative expression and sharing personal experiences two main reasons to blog. • Only one-third of bloggers see blogging as a form of journalism. Yet many check facts and cite original sources. • Bloggers are avid consumers and creators of online content. • Bloggers are heavy users of the internet in general. • Bloggers are major consumers of political news. • About half of the bloggers that consume political news prefer sources without a particular political viewpoint. • Bloggers often utilize community and readership-enhancing features available on their blogs. • Source: Pew Internet & American Life Project Tracking Surveys, November – December 2005 and February – April 2006. For sample based on bloggers, N=308. Margin of error is ±7%. For sample based on internet users, n=4,753, margin of error is ±2%. 26

Blogs • Starting A Blog • What is the Focus? • What Should I Consider Ahead of Time? • how much to say, when to say it, what i will and won’t reveal, where are my lines, etc. • Who is my Audience? 27

Blogs • Where to Get Started TypePad: http://www.sixapart.com/typepad/index WordPress: http://wordpress.com/ Blogger: http://www.blogger.com/start • It’s about Conversations-leave comments on • Write regularly. You might not need a tight publishing schedule (every morning at 9:30 am CST) but you should not write so infrequently that the conversation becomes anemic. 28

Blogging Success Stories • Using Delivery Vehicles for Business Success Conversations are happening. It is better as a business to be involved in that conversation than to be separate from it. • Microsoft Changed Perceptions - Moved the Compass • Thomas Mahon, Saville Row Tailor Blogging about his love of his craft brought him success 29

Step It Up With Podcasting The Podcast Things to consider before getting started and resources to get you there. 30

Podcasts • Any audio recording can become a podcast. A note of consideration as to why a blog might be more successful than a podcast: Usability Text is scannable Text is faster and easier to consumer Searchability Text based content • Ways to help Make the podcast scannable. Break the podcast into chapters to easily locate information. (Think DVD chapters in a movie) Let people read the transcript if they don’t want to listen. Someone can get the information they require either way. You should enable either method. Add text to your podcast. Include the actual text of the transcript if possible but at a minimum include keyword meta data. 31

Didn’t Starbucks try this and Fail? • Why It Didn’t Work • Too corporate • Too boring • Too much like an infomercial • Why It Could Work • Real Stories • Baristas, (employees) tell stories about the store, the customers, the regulars • Customers, what have they seen happen there and on the street outside while people watching, what has happened to them while being there • Talk to coffee conisseurs. Coffee has as much history and variety as wine, people like to learn about these things from experts. 32

Podcast-Getting Started • Know your audience & let them interact with you and your content • Guest spots • Allow comments • Stay Engaged over time • Be Prepared • Use a script-flow, tell a good story, tell them what you are going to talk about, be passionate, be personal (don't sound canned or artificial), if you are interviewing-ask leading questions, etc. • Do an intro: include who you are, what is the podcast, pre-announce, thank the audience, tell them what's up for the next podcast • Casting-bring in interesting and relevant people, theme songs are a good idea-it warms people up, they are used to receiving content that way, be careful of copyright, podsafe music, myspace pages-usually just ask, use an outro as well • Good Equipment • Pre-amplify (mic signals are low, they need amplification) • Edit Well 33

Resources More on all of this Books and links to help you get more information and get started with your blog or podcast. 34

Resources • Marketing & Measurement & Research If you get customers talking to each other and to you, that’s an opportunity ﬁlled ﬁrst step. • Word Of Mouth Link to other blogs, comment on other blogs, participate in the blogosphere and get your blog known • Technorati Currently tracking 75.2 million blogs Where’s the Fire • Feedburner Media distribution and audience engagement services Helps bloggers promote, delivery and learn how to monetize content • BlogPulse Automated trend discovery system for blogs. • Pew Internet & American Life Project http://www.pewinternet.org/index.asp 35

Resources • Books • The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki • The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual by Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger • Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel • The Starﬁsh and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom 36

Resources • RSS • Wikipedia Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(ﬁle_format) • What is a Feed? http://www.feedburner.com/fb/a/feed101 • More on Feeds http://www.sixapart.com/about/feeds • Yahoo’s RSS publisher guide: http://publisher.yahoo.com/rssguide • Nitty Gritty Techie Details: http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2175271 37

Resources • Blogs • Wikipedia Entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogs • Sun Microsystem’s online blogging policy http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/blogs/policy.html • Starting A Blog How To Start A Blog from Phil Windley of ITConversations: http://www.windley.com/essays/2004/how_to_start_a_blog • Online Blogging Policy from Working Smart: http://michaelhyatt.blogs.com/workingsmart/2005/03/corporate_blogg.html • How To Start a Blog from Michael Hyatt of Working Smart: http://michaelhyatt.blogs.com/workingsmart/2005/04/how_to_start_a_.html 38

Resources-Podcasts, Business Resources • Wikipedia Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting • Podcasts for entrepeneurs from Wall Street Journal http://startup.wsj.com • Podonomics http://podonomics.com/ from Leesa Barnes, Business Podcasting Expert and President, Caprica Interactive Marketing • Blogburst Brings publishers and media companies together to provide relevant content for blog reading audience. http://www.pluck.com/products/blogburst.html • Article: David Armano: It!s The Conversation Economy, Stupid http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/apr2007/id20070409_372598.htm 39

Resources-Podcasts, Directories • Directories • PodcastingNews.com • PodcastAlley.com • PodShow.com • Podtech.net • ITConversations.com • ITunes 40

Questions & Thank You • Jennifer Bohmbach Contact Info http://www.theimagelab.com Reference Web Sites & Blogs http://www.sun.com http://blogs.sun.com/evoljennifer http://blogs.sun.com/c2 Slides http://www.theimagelab.com/presentations.html 41

RSS, Blogging & Podcasting-Opportunities to Connect People in New Ways

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