Let’s look at how to effectively enter a natural conversation, first.

1. Establish presence.

You are at the convention. You have your shoes polished and you look really good. You slap on your “Hello My Name Is:” sticker, and you are ready to rock.

2. Listen and learn.

You spend a good amount of time walking around the convention overhearing the conversations of those around you. You are looking for a way into a conversation where you won’t be considered rude.

3. Enter by adding value.

Bingo! You overhear someone asking a question about something you are familiar with. That’s your chance… “Excuse me. I couldn’t help but overhear you were wondering where to find Widget X. I happen to work at the place that produces that widget, and you can find it right over here. Mind if I ask your name?” You know how it goes… casual conversation, natural, free-flowing and welcomed.

Simple stuff, right?  OK, well let’s apply that to the social media world. Let’s take a look at the right way, and the wrong way, as the conversation model applies to social marketing.

1. Establish presence.

You are at the convention. You have your shoes polished, and you look really good. You slap your “Hello My Name Is:” sticker on, and you are ready to rock.

Right Way: You construct a professional presence on Facebook, Twitter, etc… You have allocated the resources to not only be in the room, but to respond immediately to anyone who will approach you.

Wrong Way: You are in the room because you have to be. Fine, you built your page, but you are not allowing people to comment on it. That’s far too dangerous.  Twitter?  That’s just a tool to send out announcements, right?  There’s no way you would respond to any “@” comments or inquiries. That’s dangerous.  Congratulations. You are the Wallflower: the person who is in the room, but either too good to talk to anyone or too terrified to be approached. People around you will glance at you and think, “Why are you even here?” The sad truth? This is how most brands view Facebook and Twitter. It’s just a page to replicate your Web site.   (Unfortunately, this is an all too common view that I am working hard to change across many different departments at my current employer. I spend much of my time coaching people against this type of behavior, and it’s showing some great results.) This view actually does more brand damage than good. My advice to those of you who view it this way?  Stay away from social media all together. It will only harm your brand. Do it right, or don’t do it at all. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but it’s the truth.

2. Listen and learn.

You spend a good amount of time walking around the convention overhearing conversations of those around you. You are looking for a way into a conversation where you won’t be considered rude.

Right Way: Social media is important. It’s not a “kid thing,” so you make resources available with a staff member who is a dedicated and professional communicator. This person uses tools like Tweet Deck or Hoot Suite, or even something as simple as Flock Browser, to monitor any conversations that are of interest to your brand. They manage analytics so you can get a feel for trends in the way the world views your brand.  This person begins to understand the community around them. They study how that community communicates and become savvy to the memes and other quirks.  Quite simply, they learn how to become a part of that community. That’s not something that happens by accident. It takes time and effort. More time than many realize.

Wrong Way: We don’t have the resources to do all that, so we’ll take on a part-time intern and split his/her duties six different ways. Kids get this stuff. They’ll do just fine. If they spend 5 minutes a day looking over our pages to delete spam we should be good. Bad idea on multiple levels. First, would you put an inexperienced amateur in front of news cameras? That’s exactly what you are doing here. More often than not, reporters are scanning social media outlets for leads. (In recent years, BBC sent a memo to its staff basically stating, “You will learn social media and use it, or you are welcome to help yourself out the door.”)  Anything that is stated out in the social media world is enough to make a headline. Are you ok with an amateur creating a headline about you? In addition, and even worse, you showed up to the convention… people EXPECT that if you are visible in a real-time world like social media that you will be listening to what they are saying. If not, you shouldn’t be there, and they will probably tell you just that. Imagine if someone walked up to you in the convention and asked you a question. What would happen if you took five hours to respond? Do you think they would stick around? The social media game is not e-mail. You can’t take five minutes a day to respond to people. It’s an all-day thing. I can guarantee you that if you take too long to respond, they will have already moved on to your competitor, who is responding in real-time. There’s a REASON Google and Bing spent billions on real-time search.

3. Enter by adding value.

Bingo! You overhear someone asking a question about something you are familiar with. That’s your chance… “Excuse me. I couldn’t help but overhear you were wondering where to find Widget X. I happen to work at the place that produces that widget, and you can find it right over here. Mind if I ask your name?” You know how it goes… casual conversation, natural, free-flowing and welcomed.

Right Way: Natural. You flow and build relationships. You know the community because you have been listening to it. You overhear a conversation that could involve you. That’s when you jump in. You offer value. Is someone looking for something? Help them find it. Does it relate to your brand?  Tell them that. It’s as easy as, “Here’s what you are looking for, and I am glad to help… You know we also have the new improved Widget Y over here, too…”  Congrats, you are in the conversation. Relevance is key.

Wrong Way: In the convention, you pull out your bullhorn and start yelling at everyone how great your brand is. “We’re the best! We make Widget X!!! Hey everyone!!! Did I mention that we also make Widget Y!?!” Immediately, you get angry looks from everyone who you have so rudely interrupted. At best, you will be ignored. At worst? Someone clicks the “report spammer” button on Twitter, or the “Hide from newsfeed” link on Facebook, and security moves in your direction to throw you out of the convention. After you are gone, they will whisper to each other about what jerks you and your brand are… but you won’t have to hear it, because you aren’t in the room anymore anyway. Sadly, it seems this method is how many social marketers feel they will be most effective. They just blurt out sales pitches over Twitter, and their Facebook feeds are nothing but announcements with no comments or likes from users. They view the archaic world of impression-based advertising as a current model.

In short, things have changed. It’s no longer about how many eyeballs you can get in front of. Your audience has become really good at filtering out noise. As a community, they can appear to be looking right at you, and not see you at all. It’s not about page views or impressions anymore. It’s about relevance and interaction. How many people are actively talking about your brand? Sharing your brand with other people? Do they seek you out or are you hammering them with unwanted advertising?  It’s not that difficult to imagine how annoying both the bullhorn and the wallflower can be. Don’t be one of them. Use simple common sense and a conversational model and you’ll be in better shape than about 90% of the self-proclaimed “Social Media Gurus.”  Your brand will be stronger for it.

The How

Standards, Browser Support and You!

In part one of this series I boiled down my beliefs regarding Web development with the following statement:  “I will strive to develop standards-based Web properties that adhere to the “spirit of the law” set by the W3C in order to fully serve my customers while continuing to grow the Web and my industry into a thriving, forward-moving community.”  That’s pretty simple, right? So now let’s break this all down, and look individually at each new CSS3 feature.  Let’s see the advantages of the individual feature, the disadvantages, and a few real world differences in how things turn out. I’m an optimist. Let’s start out with the good.

The Good

Font Embedding

OK, this one is not exactly new, but support is growing to have it in CSS3 as a standard, so… Finally!  Typography is being put back into the hands of designers.  For years we have suffered with only a handful of fonts that were “safe” to use on the Web. Now with the new CSS3 property called @font-face we can embed fonts in our pages so that they correctly display even if our end users don’t have the font installed. This opens up a brand new world of typography-inspired design and freedom.

Text/Box Shadow

With the new text-shadow and box-shadow features, we finally have drop shadow support without having to create images. This will really come in handy and, if used correctly, it can add a beautiful detail to your site. I have actually implemented this to create a beveled text effect on my homepage: http://www.seanriegerdesign.com.  As long as this is not a major design detail that would compromise quality level if your audience can’t see it, it can really add a subtle look of quality to your design.

Border-radius

What a handy little tool to have. Designers have been flocking to a rounded corner “2.0” look for sometime now, and this little gem will eventually let us create pure CSS rounded buttons and navigation and hopefully break us out of the boxy constraints that we have had to endure.

The Bad

Font Embedding

Well, this one falls under the “use responsibly” category.  Many Web designers have no formal or informal typography training, and we could see a lengthy period of people using fonts without rhyme or reason.  Good typography can be stunning and beautiful.  Poor typography can render a page absolutely unusable. I shudder to think just how often we will be seeing paragraph after paragraph of Comic Sans covering our screens. Not to mention the whole copyright infringement issue when folks start posting fonts they have purchased from Adobe, without redistribution rights, on their site where anyone can download it. Font face designers are already scrambling to put some form of security in place.

Text/Box Shadow

Sigh… Browser support. This one doesn’t work in any version of IE, and it renders differently in Safari as opposed to Firefox, not to mention Google Chrome. We’re moving towards standards here right?  This one will be great once it’s supported by most browsers, but it’s just not there yet. Unless it’s a very minor detail in your design, you are risking too many people not seeing it. There are hacks for IE, but none of them look very professional and the idea is to move away from browser-based hacks. Once again, even when support is more widespread, the need to use responsibly is paramount. (See Flaming Text below in The Real World section.)

Border-radius

Here’s a new one for you: No browser support at all in any version of IE. Ouch. It also fails on a pure Web standards perspective because even browsers that do support this one don’t support it without a proprietary bit of code. That’s right. If you would like to use it in Firefox, your code is -moz-border-radius.  If you would like it to work in Safari, you would need to use -webkit-border-radius. Want to use it in both? Well, then you have to use both and then code differently for each browser. Folks, that’s EXACTLY what we are trying to get away from. In my mind… this is not something I am willing to do, and I simply can not believe that people are recommending it in my industry.

The Real World (a.k.a. “The Ugly”)

Font Embedding

Text/Box Shadow

Get ready for Flaming Text. (Sean slowly puts his head down on his desk and methodically begins to bang his head against it.)

Border-radius

OK, so here’s a screen shot of border-radius being shown in browsers that “support” it. Notice the difference in how it renders. And I know that Chrome doesn’t have that large of a market share, but really? Would you want ANY of your customers to see that?

No need to panic. Simply look before you leap.

By no means am I here to tell you that you shouldn’t start learning the ins and outs of CSS3. And I certainly am not trying to tell you that the challenges at hand are the fault of the W3C or anyone else working on the CSS3 project. In fact, quite the opposite is true. CSS3 is going to be amazingly helpful once the major browsers are ready for it. We should be learning as much as we can as the recommendations are being made by the W3C, and we should be pressuring the browser developers to make sure they correctly render standards-compliant CSS3.  Let’s push them away from the idea that it’s OK to use proprietary code to render what should be standard.

As Web developers and designers, we have made such progress as a community. We are pushing the industry forward one step at a time. Now is not the time to erase everything we have fought for simply because we get a little over-excited about some new non-standard ways to implement CSS, or because we personally don’t like a particular browser. I spoke of arrogance in my first post.  Well, that also applies to using –webkit- and –moz- and assuming that it’s not the very thing we all blew up about when it came to Microsoft’s notorious “content=”IE=8″ meta tag.

The Why

Lately, there have been many articles floating around popular design sites, regarding all the wonderful new features of CSS3 and which ones you can “use right now.”  They bring promises of rounded corners on bordered divs, embedded fonts so we can use any typeface that we want, and even native drop shadows on our text and boxes! ( An audience member jumps up wildly pumping his fist in the air yelling “Yes!! Yes!!! Yes!!! as three empty triple-espresso cups roll accusingly into the aisle from behind his MacBook Pro… Sean glances tellingly into the camera and then returns to his presentation.) I have been keeping up with most of them, but unfortunately I’m having a little bit of difficulty in getting, what I believe to be, prematurely excited.

It’s not that I don’t like the idea of shiny new tools to help developers push the Web even further into the future. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the legions of designers who constantly push to be cutting edge. In fact, I’d like to consider myself to be one of them. (Sean unblinkingly eyes the crowd waiting to pounce on the first unlucky soul to snicker… )

Nope, I am just as excited to see the new features as the rest of you. It’s just that I think with all new possibilities there comes responsibility in use and caution in transition. (Netscape’s notorious <blink> tag anyone?) I think CSS3 is going to be great when it’s ready for prime time.  More importantly, I think it’s going to be great when prime time is ready for CSS3!  But sadly, regardless of what anyone tells you, it’s not.  Not yet, anyway.

Wait… Didn’t you just reverse that?  I absolutely did, but it’s true on both accounts.  Allow me to explain:

Right now, the situation is that CSS3 is not ready for prime time.

I say this because CSS3 is still mostly not in an approved phase or “recommendation” phase of roll-out.  You see, the W3C has a process for adding what they call “modules” to a finished spec.  Modules are specific sections of an overall document.  So instead of approving all of CSS3 at once, the the W3C can focus clearly on a part of it such as selectors or backgrounds.  Once a module has been thoroughly tested and goes through a process of verification, the W3C will make it a “recommendation” and then it is up to the world to implement it.  If you listen to most design blogs, you may be under the impression that CSS3 has been released.  That’s simply not the case.  In fact, as of December 18^th, the furthest progress of any particular module was the CSS3 selectors module which was only at the “proposed recommendation” phase.  So in essence, CSS3 is not ready yet.  There is a much better explanation on how the approval process works here: W3C  Process. That’s only a part of the issue. Once CSS3 has been fully recommended,  it then depends on which browsers can fully support the finished spec.  That’s where the opposite becomes true:

Prime time is also not ready for CSS3… Yet.

It is likely that the longer standing issue will be that browsers will not fully implement the W3C’s recommendations for some time. Currently, there is almost no support with Internet Explorer (Although they are promising support with the release of IE9) and Safari, as well as Firefox, have limited support but are both using proprietary code to do this. To be fair though, until there is a recommendation handed down from the W3C, one can’t expect browser developers to adhere to standards that don’t even exist. Speaking of standards…

Standards should be automatic

You see, I have spent a considerable portion of my career nudging others in my industry towards standards. I dream of a day when developers can simply design, develop, and implement one set of code that will function and look exactly alike in all browsers. Hey, I would even be happy if they looked somewhat alike. The challenge we all face currently is that, when developing a site, we have to write code that will support the major browsers out there. In short, when it come to the recommendations of the W3C… I drank the Kool-Aid long ago.

The analytics that I watch tell me that I need to support IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 2 through Firefox 3.6, Google Chrome, Safari 2 and Safari 3, not to mention iPhone, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile devices. I also need to take into account the difference in each browser on different operating systems. So needless to say, we waste a considerable amount of time each day tweaking code and adding “hacks” to make sure our site is at least usable in all of the above browsers. The holy grail is to get the site to look great in all browsers. So why not just drop support for older browsers? (cough… IE6 cough…) Because:

Arrogance is only cool for rock stars and chefs.

What???  Yep, I’ll say it again: Arrogance is only cool for rock stars and chefs. There’s a reason that we all laughed at the popular Seinfeld character known as “The Soup Nazi” . And it’s the very same reason we applauded when Pearl Jam stood up to Ticketmaster.  It’s something that most of us are unable to do in our daily lives: Walk away from something as if money were no object.  Most of us would love to, but we live in the real world that requires real money to survive and that real money only comes from real customers. If you want to alienate a good portion of them, then you better be a fictional TV character or a multi-million dollar rock star.

That being said, I have seen an alarming attitude shift among designers lately, which sounds something like this:

“I can’t believe people are still using IE6. They must be stupid so I am going to just stop coding for IE6 and let them get a broken site. That way they will have to upgrade their browser.”

Or even worse:

“The new features in CSS3 are just what we’ve been waiting for. Who uses IE anyway? People using IE need to get a clue!”

Yeah… That last little piece of enlightenment is an actual quote from the comment section on a design blog that will remain nameless. My reply?  Well, according to the analytics on my site, it looks like 45% of my customers are using versions of IE. Say what you want, but I am not comfortable with serving up a “lesser” version of my site to 45% of my customers, simply because I think that I am “smarter” than they are.  In my experience, you always ask a customer “How may I help you?” not “Why should I bother?”  Arrogance is seldom a good business model.

OK! Get to “The How” already!

So now you have a basic idea of my Web development philosophy. It can be boiled down to this statement:  I will strive to develop standards-based Web properties that adhere to the “spirit of the law” set by the W3C in order to fully serve my customers while continuing to grow the Web and my industry into a thriving, forward-moving community.  In part two, I am going to take some of the new features in CSS3 and explain how they don’t necessarily align with the above statement… yet.  Thanks for reading, and stay tuned!

Wouldn’t it be great if there was something like that for your brand?  How great would it be to say something like “Dear Magic 8-Ball, how many people are talking about my latest product launch?” then shake your magical ball-o-answers and see “6,557,442″ slowly float to the surface?  Or maybe you could say “Magic 8-Ball, should I invest more of my resources towards Facebook or Orkut in my South-American market?”  (An enthusiastic IT professional sporting a “Hello my name is Saul” sticker, stands up and calls out “Now you’re thinking globally Sean!”) Thanks, Saul. (I think I mentioned already that this blog would be conversational, right?) Wouldn’t it be fantastic if you could have some of these questions answered in one neat little package?

You bet it would!  Think about how much money is spent in the world to answer one fundamental question: “What does my market think about X? Now, think about how many budgets have been cut due to the financial mushroom-cloud we’ve seen over the last year. Sadly, I’m not here today to tell you about the new “Magic 8-Ball” for marketing.  (An angry man jumps up and screams out “You LIE!!!”) No… no… Sir, the town hall meeting on healthcare is in the other conference room down the hall. (man blushes and leaves quietly) Sorry folks. Where was I? Oh, right… Sadly, I’m not going to be revealing any single Magic 8-Ball today, but I am going to offer a few simple tools that could help you figure out what is being said about your brand out in the social media world.

Code Name: LookingGlass

Before I dive into the tools that I typically use, I think it would only be fair to talk about a unique product on the horizon. I can’t endorse it simply because I haven’t used it yet (…and neither has anyone else, because it hasn’t launched), but I do find it extremely interesting.  I think that if it delivers what it is promising,  it could be incredibly useful in brand management. It’s a Microsoft application code named LookingGlass. From what I have seen so far, it looks like a single dashboard interface that would allow users to track what people are saying about a brand across multiple social media platforms. Check out the video to the right. It’s a little bit of a sales pitch, but showcases what Microsoft is hoping it will be when complete.

Trendistic

trendistic.com – Now this is a handy little tool.  It allows you to follow Twitter trends over time.  Type in your brand to see what folks are saying about it, or not saying in some cases.  In the main line graph you can click on any day to see what the individual tweets are.  It’s a quick and dirty way to see if there is a trend with the buzz surrounding your brand and… it’s free!

Gist

www.gist.com – Gist is a hosted service that I recently signed up with.  (It’s free but still in beta.) Remember how I was talking about the Web moving in an aggregation direction?  Well that’s what this service does. It consolidates your connections and contacts from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Sales Force, and even e-mail clients like Outlook and G-mail. Once you have connected all of these,  it pieces together comprehensive info on all of your contacts. How does this help you discover what’s being said? Simple really, it builds a profile on each contact which includes their company. Once it does this, it looks for any recent news stories, blog articles, tweets, etc. from or about each person and/or each company that each person is with.  All in one easy to use interface.

Trendsmap

trendsmap.com – I have to admit, when I first saw this one it kind of sent chills down my spine. It’s actually a mash-up between Google Maps and Twitter. What it does is allow anyone to look at a map of the world that displays current Twitter trends in real time.  Take a look at it. It’s important to note that what is top story news here in the US is often not top news around the world. Where it becomes a little overwhelming is if you drill down into one of the key-words. Do that and you will be watching millions of conversations happen in real time.  Let’s think about that for a moment.  OK, that’s long enough.

Google Blog Search

blogsearch.google.com - That brings me to the final tool for today. Surprisingly, it’s one that is all too often overlooked.  Google Blog Search allows you to run a search on any topic that you can imagine throughout the “blogosphere.” You should do this periodically to investigate what is being said about your brand.  Don’t take it lightly, blogs have been known to make and break companies. You should have a decent idea about what’s being said, and this is a very easy and free tool to use. Simply search on some terms that reflect your company or brand.

So, while there may not be any single Magic 8-Ball type of tool yet, clearly there are some other interesting options available.  I would love to hear about some of the tools you are using. Feel free to comment below and I’ll see you all next time. Thanks for reading!

Nope.  Today, I am going to talk about another possible “game-changer”. One  that was released quietly… muted by a blanket of frantic “Send me an invite to Google Wave!” cries. What I am talking about is a feature on the new Google toolbar. It’s a feature called SideWiki. (Fido cocks his head and murmurs back in Scooby Doo fashion: “Ride… Riki?”)

For those of you who are not familiar, a Wiki is a page or Web site that is collaborative. The content is created by the audience contributing their knowledge on any given subject. That is, any user can create, edit or modify the content, without HTML knowledge.

Probably the best known example of this is Wikipedia.org. So far, Wikipedia has been a smashing success. The theory behind that success is that people will generally correct any mistakes or inappropriate posts to a  page, in essence, keeping each other honest and providing relevant content for the rest of the world.

That being said, Google has implemented a sidebar tool that allows users ( in Wiki fashion ) to make comments on any site across the Web.  Of course, it’s not really on your site, but in a Google toolbar that displays any comments made about your site when another toolbar user comes across it.  Any user is able to add a comment to this area that will be there for all to see. Being that there a millions of people using this toolbar, one needs to think a little bit about how this changes things.

In the past, some companies have been shy about letting users comment on their Web sites. Understandably, concerns with negative posts and competitors being able to post links to their sites kept them from jumping into the arena.  Of course, some of these same folks are the ones most concerned about the Google feature launch. Like most “new” technologies, there are differing views and strategies that will be hotly debated in the online community.

I’ll let the pundits argue about whether it’s “right” or “wrong” for Google to do it. I’m sure there are great arguments on each side, but it’s already here, so I am more concerned with having a strategy in place to deal with it.  Here’s a few things that I think site-owners and communicators should consider before things really take off.

Will this pull the conversation away from your existing blog?

As a communicator for your company is this a tool that you want to use?

If so, what should the “site owner” message be? (This pins the post at the top of the page.)

Will your legal department want to put a disclaimer or two? (insert legaleese here)

Are you going to monitor the SideWiki for negative comments?

If you decide to monitor, how often? Do you have the resources?

What type of questions should be answered directly?

What type of questions should be referred to a different venue?

What will be considered spam?

This new development will probably force discussion on the much larger issue of  how a company chooses to interact with their customers. Maybe it’s time? I believe that a company should no longer hide behind static blanket communications.  In this current climate, millions spent in advertising can be undone with one angry customer story posted to your site. (Or worse, on a highly visible social media network that you aren’t monitoring)  You can shove your head in the sand and pretend that it doesn’t exist or you can meet it head on. For those of you who know me, you know that I am all about “head on”. What’s the prize? Simple. The companies that choose to address a customer’s problem in the same public place, stand to gain customer loyalty with very little cost.

In short, people expect more.  They expect to be heard and addressed, and with Google SideWiki, they have yet another avenue to be heard. Whether you address them or not is up to you.  Let me know what you are seeing. Do any of you already have policies regarding social media style communication in place? Are any of you specifically preparing for Google SideWiki? Leave a comment or two below!

I like to call it my “Aggregation vs. Cool New Night-Club Theory of Web-Evolution”. That’s kind of a mouthful and we all seem to be so fond of acronyms in this industry so, I think I’ll refer to it from here on out as AVCNNCTOWE. Yeah, that has a catchy ring to it. So anyway, this theory actually started to form from a nagging question in my head. We all know that Twitter is blowing up like a balloon filled with baking soda and vinegar. In fact, it is now garnering more media mentions than the all-mighty Google. But why?

Don’t get me wrong, I understand Twitter, in fact I use it myself (—> follow me <—), but why the absolute media frenzy surrounding it, and more importantly, why the sudden explosion of users? Is it really that useful? I decided to follow one of my Web development heroes (who will remain nameless out of respect) and to my absolute chagrin, what I got was 5 posts per hour about his adventures into the pantry. Not exactly the cutting-edge Web techniques I had hoped for. There’s a lot of that happening out there. Sifting through thousands of useless tweets just to grab an occasional jewel. That’s a serious time investment with very little return for the end user. “But it’s Twitter!” the gurus cry. “And Twitter is hot so we all need to be on Twitter!!!” And all the marketing gurus join hands and sing mystical hymns of Twitter towards the sky…

Hmmm… Now you see, that conjured a very familiar taste in my mouth… It was full bodied with slight hints of Margarita Friday’s and subtle undertones of Hawaiian Shirt Tuesdays with team meetings that took place in a bongo circle. It was that euphoric feeling of growth in the late 90’s. You remember, that wonderful time just before… ( bows head in reverence ) …the dot com crash?

Or maybe it was the zesty flavor of low interest rates. The unmistakable aroma of sky-rocketing real estate values with the musky scent of sub-prime lending in the air. Ah yes, when Freddie and Fannie stood tall and proud. (Film rolls and a 1920’s era child flickers onto the screen, sitting on a door step, with a frown on his face and a deflated balloon in his hands)

Anyone else beginning to notice a pattern here? Bubble starts to grow, people get excited and completely overvalue bubble ingredient-X. Bubble grows wildly and then bubble goes pop. Adjustment time. Let’s put it this way:

1. MySpace comes around and marketers for the most part, miss out.
2. YouTube shows up and marketers realize that there is value to this social media thing.
3. Facebook sneaks up under the radar and only a few get into the game early.
4. People start desperately looking to get in on the ground floor of the next big thing… any next big thing.
5. Twitter starts generating some media attention, and the bubble triples in size over night, but Twitter still hadn’t figured out how to be profitable…
6. So what happens when perceived value and hype outweigh the actual value?

Yeah, yeah, yeah… we get it Sean, another bubble is forming, but what about the whole AVCNNCTOWE thing? How does the night-club come into play? Right. Sorry. So, notice in point number 4 that I say everyone is looking for the next big thing? This is exactly how night-clubs function. Look in any major city and you will see the weekly struggle for most night-club owners. People flock to places that are “hot” then those places get crowded (or a little trashy like MySpace) and people move on to the next club that has been deemed “hot”. Instead of club owners coming together to try to make an entire area of town “hot” they try to one-up each other. Their customers bounce from place to place depending on the flavor of the week. This is human nature.

We all want to discover the next big thing before it becomes the next big thing. People tend to over-value a newly dubbed hot spot. They will stand in line for hours, pay a $50.00 cover fee and submit to the judgmental eyes of Joe the Bouncer, just to get in. But what if there is no next big thing? At least, no big thing in the way that we think. Huh???

That’s where my aggregation part of the theory comes in. I don’t think we should be looking for the next Facebook or Twitter. I think the next evolution is going to be a little more subtle. A little more like the development of an entire area instead of a club. Let’s take a close look at what social media really is and why it has been so successful. I think my favorite definition is that it’s a conversation. It was explained by American Express CMO, John D. Hayes in 3601’s Social Marketing Playbook as:

“The world is in the middle of an ongoing conversation. A marketer’s challenge and job is to enter that conversation. And when you do join in, you had better be prepared to add value. If your attitude is, ‘We’re going to pound away with this many GRPs talking about our new product,’ all you’re doing is interrupting the conversation. People don’t like that.”

Let’s take that concept a little further… Why is it that services like Craig’s List took off? Why is it that more and more of us turn to our Facebook friends about what to buy and where?

It’s very simple… we trust the advice of our neighbors and friends more than the obvious pitch of a marketing campaign that we found on Google. Remember the days when one would simply ask neighbor Bob across the fence for the name of the company that painted his house? Bob was a nice guy and his house looked nice. What works for Bob, works for me. Folks, those days are back, but the fence is an iPhone running Facebook or a Blackberry running Twitter.

Now let’s take that even further still… when neighbor Bob is so close at hand, why would we bother to walk back in the house to get the phonebook (these days it goes by the name Google) to figure out where to go for a product? (A man indignantly stands up in the crowd and shouts “Mr. Rieger, you are an idiot! Search engines will always be king!” and then storms out of the room.) Uh, yeah… sorry about that. Let me try to say this as clearly as possible: I am not saying that search engines will disappear, but I do believe their importance is fading a bit.

I think we are going to see an aggregation of multiple social media platforms. If you have been following Google Wave at all, you might draw the conclusion that Google sees this same thing coming and is evolving as a company to stay ahead of the game. Aggregator… What about software like TweetDeck? It loads multiple Facebook, MySpace and Twitter accounts into one screen. Not to mention the fact that you can set up specific searches to display on that screen, as well. Again, aggregator… Recently a new service called LazyFeed launched, promising to keep up with topics you are interested in and aggregate them in one place for you. Say it with me folks… Ag-Gri-Gator!!! Why search, when you can simply tell an application what you are interested in, and have it send new developments, coupled with what your friends think about them, to you? Yes, I do think there are huge societal consequences to this, but I’ll hold my thoughts on that for another time.

Services like this are quietly popping up all over the Web. I think the Web is starting to show it’s hand on a direction, but I think you have to watch closely to see it. As an E-marketer, this tells me that instead of spending my time looking for the next big thing (hot Twitter night-club) , I should be focused on how all of the technologies work together to achieve the goals of my client for the best return on investment. Return on investment with social media?!!! Yeah, that’s right. I said it. But that’s a hot debate for another post coming very soon. On that note:

(Sean stands up and turns the mic towards the crowd) How about you? Have any of you seen signs that we’re moving in an aggregator direction on the Web? If so, share below in the comments section.

I prefer to see myself as a student.  Bright-eyed and excited about what this new world will present.  (Applause sign lights up with little effect… a single cricket chirps in the distance) Uh, yeah… I guess now might be a good time to welcome you to my writing style.  I’m sure the editorial types and academics out there will be cringing, but I’ve decided to invoke artistic license with this blog.  I would like to bring you ( the reader ) inside of my head to give you a no-holds-barred look.  It’s a stream of conscience, if you will.  At times, it’s a narration.  At other times it may ramble on a bit, but what I can tell you for sure is that you won’t find any em-dashes or en-dashes in here, and probably WAY too many ellipses…  It’s OK if that makes you want to run screaming from the room.  You probably won’t like what I have to say here, anyway.

Hopefully, some of you will connect and respond.  That’s what this is really all about.  I think all too often, Web and marketing “pro’s” tend to use jargon to paint mysterious pictures of themselves.  They would like you to think that they hold some secret key to the mystical world of marketing and the Web.  You know the types, they hold titles like “Marketing Guru” and “Web Shaman”. (crowd’s eyes grow wide and a hush settles in) Don’t get me wrong, that’s fine for people who don’t want to be questioned or challenged, but my style is a little different.  I want this site to be a conversation.

You see,  I’ve spent my entire career going the opposite direction of the “gurus”.  When I get excited about something, I want to share it with everyone.  I learned in kindergarden that sharing is fun!   (And also that when you leave your cookie soaking in the milk for too long, that you could lose it,  but that’s a different story.) What I found was that all too often I would start talking in a language full of jargon that most didn’t understand.  Sure, they respected me because I appeared to be knowledgeable, but they didn’t really understand what I was so excited about.  Well, that’s no fun.  So I started working hard to bridge the communication gap.

I learned how to explain technical concepts in a manner that most would understand.  Example:  Bandwidth.  I could have spoken in up-speeds, down-speeds, throughput, mbit’s etc… nah. Glazed eyeballs honestly do nothing for me, so I would put it this way:  The internet is a cup of coffee. You want to drink the coffee.  You can sip  through a coffee stirrer which would be dial-up, or you could step up to the soda straw that is DSL, or suck it though the garden hose known as cable/broadband and if you really want to go nuts, just hook up that OC3 fire-hose and get ready to be caffinated in hurry! (Or you could just swing by your local ExpressoGoGo and get a nice cup to go, but you get the point.)

Speaking of points, let’s get back to that whole “seeing myself as a student” thought.  I am a student.  Bright-eyed and excited about where e-marketing is headed. Things are changing fast and I have many thoughts as to where they are headed.  I’m learning right along side all of you.  We all bring different experience to the table so hopefully, through sharing old stories and new discoveries, we can make sense of all of this.  Better yet, maybe we can have some fun along the way.

What to expect?  Well, you can expect to see posts on social media marketing and my “aggrigation vs. cool new night-club” theory about where it’s all going.  You can expect to see posts on how Google Wave technology may evolve the Web, as well as HTML5 and CSS3, for the developers out there.  I will also be posting when I find interesting technologies that don’t require you to be a coder to implement, like Add to Any or Feedburner.  I know that’s a wide range, but I will try to divide these posts into technical, non-technical, and of course marketing categories. (even though I believe they are all becoming one and the same… but that’s a post for another time) Hope to see you soon!