Two days ago, Chris Brogan asked his followers on Twitter to 'tweet' him "Hi Cross Tech?" as he was in a business meeting, and I assume was discussing the effectiveness of Twitter. I wonder just how many people responded @chrisbrogan "Hi Cross Tech?" (I don't think Quotably has included all responses) I did. If you're pitching to a potential client about the uses of Twitter - you just backed your excact theory and possibly wowed them while in the process. Chris Brogan has 7,140 followers - even if only half of them were online at that exact moment - that's an outreach to 3,570 people that most likely blog.

Here's a seperate example: TechCrunch just posted today about Project Vino, an Australian wine site focused on community recommendations that tested a Twitter wine tasting model today. The post states:

"This event is one of the earliest instances of using Twitter to transfer an event as social and active as a wine tasting, into online realms. The end result? A resounding success. When you have a social drink which is best enjoyed sharing experiences with friends, it works perfectly with online communication tools."

If you check out the comments, some people loved the idea, some people simply hated it. Some people hated that TechCrunch even wrote about it. Remind you of something? Yep, that translates directly to what the masses have to say about Twitter. You either love it or hate it, however, no one can deny the power of words or the buzz those words create.

Following are recommendations for the best sites for Creative Commons blog photos and another just awesome image site. The link provided will take you to Wikipedia to further explain the different levels of Creative Commons licenses. The key piece to remember is to always provide a photo credit and link below.

1. Flickr. By far the largest resource for photos. Note: make sure you use the advanced search options and select the "Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content "
2. EveryStockPhoto. This is a license-specific photo search engine.
3. Pixdaus. By far I think the most interesting of the three, but not reviewed for licensed content. I've linked to Pixdaus and to the user profile that has uploaded the photo. When using Pixdaus be sure to avoid photos with copyrights on them.
   

"Dubai" posted at Pixdaus by Jorge

"They Are Here" posted at Pixdaus by Luke

While there can be advantages to outsourcing your online persona in this manner, there can be possible disadvantages as well. As someone creating an online presence, you should be sure that you understand what you want to use your personal site for (if indeed you even choose to have one amid the sea of social networking sites). Social sites often let you create a profile where you provide links to personal sites--these can help drive traffic to your personal page. Likewise, providing links to these social sites on your personal page can drive traffic to these external representations of you.

Ultimately, these two types of sites--personal and social--can balance each other out and drive more traffic and attention to you than you might otherwise have experienced if you were to forgo one of the options. However, the more you outsource, the more potential for less traffic to your personal site, and if this is where you house the most important content, you might see smaller readership.

You might also want to consider the implications of giving up direct control of the hosting of your content and what it means if these external sites were to change their policies or suffer a major outage. The more sites you sign up for, the more you have to keep up with in terms of updating, which might be cumbersome depending on how many social sites you use.

A reader in the comments of this blog entry did make a good point though in stating that giving out a personal URL somehow doesn't have the same weight that it used to. In a time where virtually everyone has their own Myspace or Facebook account, people want like to respond with like. For the average person, these social sites are sufficient--there is no need to bother with HTML and creating a custom site. It's also that much more effort to remember a personal URL than it is to know that you can look someone up later on Facebook and friend them.

Is there a need for an average person to have a personal site anymore, or is it completely redundant when the info can be found on multiple social networking sites? Should one keep all content in-house, or outsource it to other sites such as Flickr, Del.icio.us, Myspace, Youtube, etc.? I for one have not formulated a definite answer to these questions, but I would love to hear any opinions on the matter!

The top two questions I think this research addresses are: 1.) is UGC a fad?, and 2.) Can it be monetized (what every good marketer wants to know)?

The answer to the first question is no. As the executive summary of the report suggests, any notion of UGC being a passing fad should be put to rest.

I remember in the late 90's, leading web developers and UI strategists knew there were great reasons to push for "interactive experiences" on the web. What many had no clue about was that so much of the experience would actually be created and driven by the users themselves.

Knowing where we are today with this should seriously prompt organizations to look at how they might use UGC as part of their marketing and customer service loop.

In terms of monetization, the research is in the context of you guessed it, advertising. The main thing I get from the report are that advertisers are hesitant to enthusiastically push advertising next to UGC. Or, as Andrew Keen was quoted in Newsweek last month, "nobody wants to advertise next to crap."

Still, there are reports of organizations that plainly state they are having success selling ads next to UGC. Video sharing site, Veoh, is one of them -- selling banners as well as video advertising for approximately $8 - $20 per thousand impressions (CPM).

What's your opinion of UGC? Do you think advertising will continue to find its way into the mix?

One of the problems with twitter is that once you follow around 50-100+ people you get overwhelmed with the conversations going on, and the slow, manually refreshing web interface hinders your ability to participate. Here are 3 tools to help you be on top of the discussions happening on twitter.

1. Quotably. This is a web service that takes the linear twitter timelines and converts them into meaningful conversation threads. It's a great way to see a ton of replies to questions asked by some more popular twitter-ers. Its really cool to see a solution, or how you stack up against some of the other replies. Check out Chris Brogan's, Scoble's Quotably page to see some examples. As an icing on the cake, you can talk to the people you do not follow directly from quotably website. The downside is, since it has to figure out how to structure the threads, pretty often it gets it wrong and while they have a system set up that fixes threading, its still a manual process.

2. Twhirl. Twhirl is a huge time saver as it brings every twitter feature to the desktop as well as include some juicy extra features. You can lookup users, view their timelines, follow them, quickly reply and direct message with just 1 or 2 clicks. The app also has pretty good keyboard shortcuts so most of the time you don't even need to use the mouse. It has a great support for multiple accounts, so if you constantly have to switch between accounts this app is a godsend. Its built on Adobe AIR and can be used on both Windows and Mac, so 98% of us are covered. Check out this great Twhirl review post by Derek from derekville.net which covers installation and basic usage. It also lists some alternative applications, in case Twhirl isn't to your liking.

3. Twinkle or Hahlo. A lot of times you are nowhere near your computer, but if you have a Jailbroken iPhone (step by step instructions how to do it can be seen here, and even computer-illiterate James was able to do it successfully), I strongly recommend app called Twinkle. Every tweet you do comes with your geo-location (if you choose to include it) and you can easily snap a pic and attach it to your tweet, bringing photo-twittering to a whole new level of simplicity. If you do want want to or cannot jailbreak your iPhone, there are a few mobile safari apps that work pretty well. My favorite is Hahlo, it has ability to add friends, view their tweets, quickly reply and of course send your own updates. If you do not own an iPhone or if you just want to send a quick update, you can always use the built-in texting support by sending a SMS message to 40404 after you set it up under device settings in your twitter account.

There has been a lot of development in the 3rd party app space for twitter lately, and some of these might change over time, but for now I believe the 3 ways above will greatly improve your participation levels as well as ability to keep on top of your twitter addictions. If you have any other essential tools that you use with twitter, let us know in the comments!

Marshall Kirkpatrick of RWW posted Five Wrong Ways to Pitch RWW and One Great Way . The list of don'ts:

• Email the wrong email address
• Phone calls
• Twitter, espcially DM
• Facebook
• IM

Now that you know, don't do it. But let me call attention to the one DO:

• RSS Feeds

"PR people, please send us the RSS feeds of your clients' blogs and news releases"

Oh baby, how we love it when our ideas and concepts get affirmation like this, especially from someone like Marshall. I'm not going to go into the past two years of actively prophesying this approach, but instead focus on:

1. What a great RSS feed management program looks like and....
2. Why corporate communications teams and public relations agencies need to invest in a robust RSS system.
   

Many communications and PR professionals struggle to understand RSS feeds. Most media rooms are absent of RSS feeds, and other tools that offer online media rooms are lacking any RSS managementso the media room itself gets one RSS feed.

We've worked with a few PR firms on an active client strategy for RSS feeds. So the what this looks like is easy:

What you see on Catapult PR/IR Client RSS Feed Page are a list of client RSS feeds the agency actively and independently manages on behalf of the client. So the agency avoids the technology void of working with its clients web team to get an RSS feed on the company's news room, and more importantly trying to get someone to actively update the feed.

Why a Robust RSS Platform?

Because PR needs to move at the speed of conversational requirements.

Think about what RWW is asking for. A direct line of communication to all content updates from your client. They want to track it, see what activity is coming out of the organization, and probably, from my perspective to see if you have any new media communications competency at all.

The sign at the door reads: No Shirts, No Shoes, No RSS Feed, No Coverage.

Now, if PR and communications are reading this there is a rush for an RSS feed on the media room. But that just won't do. How about a RSS feed dedicated just for RWW, giving you the ability to directly update and communicate with the RWW team about your products, updates and other pertinent announcements.

Any good PR person knows that mass outreach tactics (press releases, form emails) don't work. You better know what the journalist is writing, blogging or podcasting about and be able to tie your story into the trends and readerships they are addressing. So a single RSS feed that is giving mass updates is a step in the right directlon, but take it one step further.

Set up a RWW RSS feed, create a custom video to embed in the feed and have your spokesperson send a personal message with what they are trying to achieve with RWW coverage.

Of course to set up that RSS feed, you'll need to be able to set up and manage your own RSS feeds: Post Zinger

1. Monitor Google. I've read that if you only monitor your brand through Google, you'll receive 70-75% of the conversations surrounding your business. That's a lot of chatter that you might be missing that involves your brand and/or products. You will want to do a Google Blog Search for your company name, prominent keywords for your business, name of your products, name of executives, and other important factors you find relevant, but make sure to start with at least those four. Grab the RSS feed for these and you'll be on your way to getting the latest and (hopefully) greatest things consumers, clients and potential customers have to say about you on their blogs. Don't forget to do the same for Google News.
2. Tweet Scan. I just started Twittering myself and will no longer question the power of Twitter. Someone might mention your product in one quick update and it could spiral into a conversation among dozens of people. After subscribing to the Tweet Scan feed revolving your business, keywords and products, make sure to set up a Twitter account for yourself so you can follow the people twittering about you.
   
3. FriendFeed. Another new tool that I've grown to love. If you just want to set something up that will simply do work for you, FriendFeed is it. Although you will want to eventually be tracking SumbleUpon, Technorati, digg, Tumblr, del.icio.us and other social media sites, FriendFeed is a good starting point.
   

Now organizing your reader and subscribing to various blogs that are important for market research, customer interaction, product ideas, industry trends and other insightful conversations and learning what to do with those conversations is another post for another day.

John Speck (aka Frymaster) had one of my favorite responses to this on his own blog: "This is Your Brain. This is Your Brain on a Server." In his "not so humble opinion" he talks about how the Internet is still a toddler, about a three-year old to be exact.

His point: don't put too much stock into all the social media apps (facebook, twitter, etc) because they are all transitional. "The Internet has a lot to learn about communicating with the society around it."

We are the Internet... we are the children, we are the ones to make a brighter day, so let's start living. Oh, sorry, got distracted there. I'm wondering what will eventually qualify the Internet as teen-aged. Because it is the collective of society, won't it always be childish?

I'm finding the phrase "social media" is more of a fad than the phenomenon that actually encompasses it. EMarketer's report on User Generated Content, released this week, shows that social media (for lack of a better term) is here to stay.

To Frymaster's and Chris Brogan's point, I say the "experts" are the children who can behave older than the rest:

They are the ones that actually help pick up (it's messy out there), know when to obey (some laws of marketing should never be broken), and get invited to more play dates (client gigs).

http://www.capturetheconversation.com/feed/blog.rss

The old feedburner URL will stop working at the end of the month and to keep subscribed you need to change it to the url above.

We'd like to also take this opportunity to thank all of you for subscribing and apologize for this inconvenience.

James Clark - Blog | Twitter | FriendFeed | LinkedIn | Facebook | Digg | DandyId
Jason Cormier - Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
Jennier Eubanks - LinkedIn | Facebook
Ben Castelli - Blog | Twitter | Facebook
Ingrid Getzan - Blog | Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook
Stepan Mazurov - Twitter | FriendFeed | LinkedIn | Facebook | Digg | Pownce | DandyId
Emma Sefton - Twitter | FriendFeed | LinkedIn | Facebook | Digg
Wendy Ricci - Twitter | FriendFeed | LinkedIn | Facebook

Look us up, we love to talk to all our readers. We will keep this post updated until we get our own little profiles here at CTC.

UPDATE 7/25/08 - We grew! Added new family members and added a few services for others.

Uh, yeah! I'm not shocked at all by the recent report from Pollara that garnered data stating:

"Of more than 1,100 adults polled in December, nearly 80% said they were very or somewhat more likely to consider buying products recommended by real-world friends and family, while only 23% reported being very or somewhat likely to consider a product pushed by "well-known bloggers."

Marc Macalua, had a great post referencing this study and how prevalent WOMM initiatives laser focus on A-List bloggers, forum veterans and senior Diggers to spread the message.

It's a strategy that if done right and the content is compelling, the story had a differentiation edge, there's good emotional content and it's simple to understand - you've got something that can go viral. So that equates to about 1% of all the stories out there that WOMM agencies are trying to work with.

Litmus Test

The true litmus test for an organization is to see if it's employees believe in the product, service or program enough to tell their "real-world" friends - many of which by the way they are connected to, and communicate with via social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace.

This of course would require that your employees are maintaining social media profiles, but even more importantly, would require that your employees are proud enough of the company, their role in the company and its achievements to tell their friends and family.

Swallow Your Pride And Do The Following:

1. Ask your employees if they would be willing to discuss your company's product with their friends and family on their social networking sites.
2. Find out how many of them actually do it.
3. If people are not willing to do it, ask them why.

The answers might just be the solution to the problems that are plaguing your organization.

A few posts back, I did a video post on Social Media Starting Points, where I recommend that individuals start participating in social media via LinkedIn. The reason as I stated in that post:

"Because on LinkedIn you can quickly connect with individuals you have had personal relationships with through previous employers, universities, groups, etc. It's human nature to be more comfortable around the people we already know."

With the adoption of aggregation services like FriendFeed where in one place we can now see blog posts, family photos, articles they liked, restaurants they loved and music they are listening to - it's becoming easier for us to maintain communications and stay up to date with what our "real-world" friends are doing out there in the wild and wacky world.

More of a Reason to Encourage Social Media

So this report that states real world friends and family are more influential to purchasing decisions only strengthens the case for companies to actively support and encourage it's employees to participate in social media programs.

While people with more common names will have a harder time ranking for your own name as the first result, the tips below are helpful to everyone. First and foremost it is important to not be afraid to use your name on social websites. As Gary Vaynerchuk pointed out, your legacy, which starts with the name, is more important than money (currency) you currently make. You are your own brand in Social Media and New Media Marketing, so to rank high for your name on search engines you must not be afraid to use your name.

There is 2 main ways to get this accomplished. First goal is to get your profile and your name on as many high trust sites as possible, here is a list of must-haves:

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Pownce
• Flickr
• Digg

The big thing about these sites is they all allow you to link 1 or more sites, Pownce, Digg and LinkedIn being the best about cross linking your websites.

Second way to get the site ranked for your name is to simply comment on blog posts you find interesting. Best way to provide an insightful comment is to ask a question related to the post to initiate conversation. Check our our tutorial on how to post a blog comment. If you have troubles finding interesting blog posts, I suggest you check out reddit, digg or stumbleUpon, across those 3 sites, you have unlimited amount of fresh interesting content to read and ultimately comment on.

Keeping those 2 tips in mind, you should have no problem getting even the toughest names ranked well on search engines. If you have any other suggestions, please let us know in the comments. We would love to hear how those tips help you rank well for your own name.

Offline, salespeople are always roaming around looking for people who might need help, and if they aren't, they are generally easy to spot to ask for assistance. Online usually requires a few more hoops to get to an online chat--assuming you're shopping during hours where they have someone available. In the event that you are unable to chat with someone, your only option is usually to email someone. Of course, you do usually get a response, but that can take a day or two. What if you need an answer right now?? This is definitely an instance where offline has the upper hand.

Another factor that Ed didn't mention, but one that is most important in why I even do any offline shopping at all is that of sizing. Women's clothing is notorious for coming in seemingly arbitrary sizes. Even if you know your measurements, you still have to do a bit of guesswork to figure out what size you might be in a particular designer's clothing. Not to mention, you simply cannot get the same idea of how color and shape of some clothing will look on you without trying it on. Sure some sites offer those cool little applications that put the clothes on a couple different generic body types, but most people don't fit exactly within one of those forms. There's also something to be said for being able to see how it fits on you as well as feel the fabric and whether or not it is comfortable.

And don't even get me started on shoes. While I tend to be the same size, I know many people who vary quite a bit depending on the brand and type of shoe. The issue of comfort is also something you can't know until you've tried it on. You can read reviews and see if the sizes run true and how they felt for the majority of people, but it's still no guarantee.

Sure, online sites tend to offer excellent return policies, and while I prefer the amount of laziness that online purchasing affords me, returning items infringes on my lack of effort. To return something often requires calling someone for an authorization number and then contracting a shipping service to take your package. Either that or a trip to the post office. All in all I feel it is far less hassle to return something to an actual store, something that is often not possible depending on where you made your online purchase.

I'm all for online shopping, and it is indeed how I purchase the majority of holiday and birthday gifts for my friends and family. When it comes to certain items such as apparel, I tend not to want to make the purchase unless I am very sure I know how it will fit or am able to return it to a nearby store. While online shopping is popular for good reason, there are still some key points where, for me, it can't replace the immediacy of the offline realm.

I've been curious regarding the primary demographic that continues to drive twitter to increased popularity. Owyang had four questions for Shel Israel recently, one of which pertained to the one trend he is recognizing from his SAP Global Survey work.

For Shel, the question was a softball lob. "In every country, youth is driving social media adoption." Marketers who want to use social media need to understand what the most effective tools are: How they work, and why.

Now, you would think in my line of work I would be a Twitter junkie, but that's not the case. I've had a love/hate relationship with Twitter and still do. First I was indifferent, then slightly interested, then just plain annoyed. Now I'm intrigued. It's entertaining to be let into a little window of someone else's psyche. However, I still don't want to know the mundane details of everyone's day - but then it hit me. I don't have to. I can cater Twitter to work for me - and that's what it's all about. I finally get it.

Twitter isn't just a form of entertainment - a recent project for a client taught me that. I am now seeing Twitter in a new light, changing my contentious opinion of why it's so popular. I'm well aware that within a couple weeks, I'll most likely have Twhril installed and will be following all of my friends on a minute by minute basis - keeping up on the mundane details of the day. That's just how powerful, entertaining, addicting and effective social media is.

It works great in theory, you get an update email that has very clear instructions on how to correctly reply:

--- Reply ABOVE THIS LINE to post a comment to the project ---

Company: Room 214
Project: Room 214
Link: https://room214.projectpath.com/P12538029

Stepan Mazurov said:
...

And as long as people are careful not to include anything else above that line, basecamp has no issues displaying emails incorrectly, everyone on the thread gets a notification that reply has been posted, everything looks nice and threaded in Gmail. This is a huge plus for threaded clients (Gmail, thunderbird, etc) because before they would get confused as to which email was part of witch thread.

People that use Gmail will notice right away that mine and Ben's name are the same color, because they are coming from the same email address, while it isn't a huge blow, I'm used to identifying people by the color of their name rather than the name itself.

Another MAJOR issue that basecamp was quickly fixed was the inclusion of recent project history, which some people managed to get into their basecamp replies and pollute the e-waves with useless information. While we are on the subject of seeing random things in updates, it seems that some clients like to stick the signature before any of the old reply text. Its a good practice to ether get rid of anything that's not the direct message or make sure its written after the reply cut off.

My final concern is that people who like to get fancy with their replies, by ether cutting into the original message text (in case of Q & A for example), or by including their reply after the message will run into major problems and if they do not catch their mistake, the message will simply vanish. Hopefully they will be able to see the huge "Reply ABOVE THIS LINE" text and adjust their response accordingly.

Despite the inevitable shortcomings, its great to finally see this feature implemented because it is too often that we get a reply that does not reach its intended party and we later have to piece together the indented conversation.

It's said if you want to be an expert go write a book. Even if the book is self published, as long as you walk in and hand someone a physical book - you're a perceived authority on the topic.

Playing off my public relations days, getting visibility and driving book sales is a huge, huge effort. There are publicists and PR agencies focused on planning, strategy, distribution deals, executing book tours, media tours, radio tours, author events, etc. The cost can be astronomical if you really want to hit it big.

Blogging and Amazon Changes the Landscape

Blogging has created a new entry point for expert positioning, and Amazon has created the simple and fast book distribution platform. The two combined provide a powerful, inexpensive and authentic approach to expert leadership.

Case and Point: Direct Response Radio

Our Room 214 client Brett Astor of Strategic Media has been blogging for close to two years now at Direct Response Radio Advertising Blog. After many posts and immersion into the direct response radio world, Brett realized that he had created enough content and more importantly knew the hot button issues people faced with radio advertising.

Using his unique perspective from his personal experience Brett was able to put forth a book that is now the definitive guide on radio advertising.

That book is now available on Amazon - for you or anyone in the world to buy.

Was it easy? Heck no. It took a commitment on Brett's end to keep the blog fresh, to look for ways to connect and integrate radio advertising in the overall marketing mix.

But he did it, and now he can just throw those business cards into the circular file.

• Search Bar on the top
• Invitation to take a survey (courtesy of very awesome wufoo)
  
• Easier-to-find link that helps add twitter to your blog.

The one I'm mostly excited is the search, while there are 3rd party tools available that do a lot more, its great that twitter team is filling much needed holes there.

My favorite recent story that I came across was on Wired.com. There I found an article about "Canada's dumbest car thief." This individual took a tricked-out car for a test drive, only to never return. The owner of the dealership, an internet-savvy 20-something, went straight to the automotive discussion forum Beyond.ca and posted a description of the vehicle and the suspect.

What started as a mere post on a forum branched out and used many other online tools such as Facebook and Google Maps to discover the suspect's name, address, and other personally identifying information. Since the thief kept the car parked in front of his own house, the dealership owner knew exactly where to send police, and made sure to be there to tape the arrest and post it on YouTube--a fitting online ending to a crime solved thanks to the Internet.

While the Internet is a tool often used for entertainment or research, it also offers means to track down criminals for crimes that occurred offline. The resolution of these two different cases is just so cool that it shows how much the Internet has to offer when its powers are used for good!

1. Abandoning ad copy split testing after initial success
2. Misunderstanding margin and miscalculating ROI from PPC ad spend
3. Assuming top ad placement will result in the greatest conversion or ROI.
4. Not sending traffic to the most relevant pages
5. Disorganized campaign structure

Ok, I actually have 6 but "Top 5" sounds better so here is a bonus one:
6. Having too narrow or too broad keyword strategy

Got any other common mistakes you think should be on the list? lemme hear about them!

We go through and get them set up with mics, recording software, etc. But inevitably, what we find is the rooms, or spaces, they are attempting to record in have a terrible echo. We deal with the same problems in our own offices here.

I just came across a great video by Jake Ludington showing how to put together a portable recording booth for under $42.00.

It's Friday, so this is going to be a good weekend project as I already have the Snowball USB mic.

On April 4, MLK was assasinated in Memphis, Tennesse.

Just two days ago, while visiting our client Travel Channel in D.C. Jason and I were fortunate to be able to have some extra time to visit The National Mall.

We were standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial imagining the power of and emotion that was experienced during the day of MLK's I Have A Dream Speech.

When's the last time you ordered a nice satisfying steak from a fast food restaurant?

I'm looking forward to the day when planning a social media strategy is not the last agenda on the marketing team's strategic initiative.

If there is ever a marketing program that needs time to marinade before it gets thrown on to a hot grill it is social media.

Why? Because social media is not made to operate like a fast food joint, where everything can be pre-cooked and ready to go.

It takes time to plan, prepare and present. Understand that social media networks are not there to serve you, you are there to feed them. Big difference in how one needs to approach a social media effort.

Immersion, Feedback, Acceptance is the marinade that goes on the steak. Go get yourself all slathered up in the conversations by getting involved in the discussions where you want to be recognized.

Your biggest challenge will be acceptance - because that takes time, energy, effort and authenticity.

For starters, there are lists abounding out there about how to launch a social media program. I particularly like Chris Brogan's post. Social Media and Social Networking Starting Points.

Inspired by: Seth Godin