Everything I ever learned about marketing in school revolved around documentation and planning. Before you engage in research, you need to have a plan. Before you launch a campaign, you need to have a plan. What I’ve found after operating out in the world is that sometimes the best plan is action itself.

We are what we habitually do

Earlier today I was reading a blog post from Adam Carroll discussing the fact that we are what we habitually do. The line is actually a quote from Aristotle, saying “We are what we habitually do. Excellence then is a habit not an act.” While we can plan to be a better person, a better salesman, or a more-engaged employee, it’s what we actually do that determines our true course.

I’ve been planning to do more blogging since I started this blog a few years ago; I’ve even made it part of a New Year’s resolution. But the reality is that even with all the planning in the world, those plans aren’t going to publish new posts on my blog.

Take action, start doing

As of today, I’m going to start blogging more. I won’t set a limit or a goal or an objective (much to my own dismay), but rather will just focus on doing. Period.

What things have you been putting off because you don’t have the right plan in place? What could you start doing now?

As social media becomes a larger focus for brands and organizations, and we get past the experimental phase and into the operational stage of social media, I believe this will continue to happen. With more consumers and money shifting to social media, traditional agencies are doing everything they can to get up to speed, but it’s likely they’ll buy their way there instead of building it.

Even within the social media industry, acquisitions and partnerships are already being made. Ant’s Eye View expanded their colony by acquiring popular business authors and renowned bloggers Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba. Dachis Group crossed the Atlantic through it’s acquisition of Headshift. And the Altimeter Group tripled in size when Jeremiah Owyang, Deb Schultz, and Ray Wang announced they were joining Charlene Li’s venture.

Build it or buy it?

Today’s big deal puts another tally in the acquisition corner, but it’s not a surprise. We’ve even seen these tactics being employed by Des Moines -based Meredith Corporation. Their interactive division (now Meredith 360°) has been scooping up service providers left and right over the past few years.

Also, as Aaron Strout discusses in his blog post about today’s acquisition, Powered feels this situation is the solution that businesses and marketers are looking for:

“We felt like it was important to take this approach because up until now, marketers have lacked a “go to” resource that could meet all of their social needs.”

Is a consolidated marketplace inevitable?

With the seemingly high number of companies looking to address the social media space in Des Moines, how long will it be before businesses start being assimilated into larger companies? Or are traditional agencies content with trying to develop these skills in-house? Or is there still room for more people to do social media consulting?

In the fast-paced, cut-throat world that we are all doing business in, I think acquisition is a very likely scenario for agencies, just like brands themselves are bringing talent inside their organization.

Will there be a fallout of social media companies in Des Moines? Can more be achieved through a united front and working together?

What do you do if you don’t have content? You create it. However, one company I came across recently has a different way of going about creating content. They’ll let you pay them to create it for you.

Content is content, right?

Reading through Paid Content earlier this week I was presented with a banner ad for AcquireContent, a content solution from Gale. AcquireContent has two main solutions for businesses that need content: custom creation of content and licensed or shared content.

In most situations, exchanging a fee for services rendered by a provider is nothing out of the ordinary. People and businesses do this every day. Where things start to get questionable is when you look at this situation in various contexts. For example, if you are a business looking for custom content to keep your site fresh and visible in search engines, you might rely on AcquireContent to create that. In fact, they are happy to create “effective, original material, delivered on time and to your specifications” that you can use. If you are using the generated article as something for a topical newsletter, it may be fine. But what if you were using it as a blog post? Is that still ok?

Your content defines you – make it your own

Though there are many ways to create content, think long and hard before you outsource the work – especially when it will be used in social media. When you are building relationships based on the content and information you are sharing, it is important that it truly reflects you or your business. And if you are having someone else develop it, at least make it part of your disclosure (like guest blog posts).

Is it ok to pay someone else to create content for you? Would you feel misled if you discovered a business was leveraging the talents of someone else and sharing it as their own?

Though the success of the service itself is reason enough for little red machines to keep popping up on every corner, social media also seems to be playing into the strengths of the DVD rental company.

Getting started in social media

Last summer redbox started its “Free Movie Mondays,” a promotion where an alphanumeric code was distributed on Monday afternoons that could be used to redeem a free rental. Because the same code was used for everyone, fans of the service did whatever they could to spread the word about redbox’s great deal—posting codes on Facebook, tweeting them to friends, and even putting sticky notes on the rental machines themselves. One technologist in Kansas City even went so far as to set up a Twitter account for redbox that would automatically tweet the new code on Mondays.

As the promotion succeeded and more people learned about redbox, it didn’t take long for the company to rethink its strategy. redbox eventually went on to take over the redbox Twitter account (discontinuing the practice of tweeting codes), plus they started a blog where they could directly engage with fans: the redblog. This is the stage that many companies are in today; they are just beginning to test the waters of social media and are doing lots of experimentation. redbox posts regular reviews of upcoming and released titles, but also uses it as a platform to highlight and promote its fans.

Adapting to the real-time world

While redbox is doing a great job with supporting its community through social media, it seems as though redbox underestimated how much fans really loved their service. While the “Free Movie Mondays” used to occur on every Monday, redbox recently scaled the promo back to the first Monday of the month only—likely a business decision more than anything (can you imagine how much they lose in rental fees by offering a free night?). And even more recently, redbox made another update to its free rental SMS campaign, stating that all SMS users would now be receiving their own unique codes. The move to less frequent and unique codes says to me that social media did its job too well: allowing friends to share information (including rental codes) with one another in real-time.

While social media has allowed their business to grow and to provide an effective means for friends to share their love of the service, it also served as a tool that would undermine its core business model: getting people to pay for DVD rentals.

With the recent changes to the free rental promotion and redbox’s continued community efforts in social media, this company is likely to continue growing for a long time.

Have you seen situations where social media worked so harmoniously that it was viewed as working too well? How would you advise redbox to leverage social media to the benefit of their business?

For over two years now, Central Iowa has played host to a monthly event called Central Iowa Bloggers. The gatherings started with just a handful of area bloggers getting together for a morning coffee, attempting to better connect in person with those they interacted with online.

I still remember the Business Record article I read in 2007 introducing Mike Sansone and the blogonostra, once a group of strangers that met online, but now a tight knit group of laptop-wielding, business-blogging individuals. It was shortly after I saw that article that I attended my first event and started this blog, hoping to share my own thoughts on marketing as a recent college grad living in a digital world.

Two years later, I have connected to more individuals and business professionals than I could have ever imagined—all because of a slathering of words on the internet and a local Panera Bread bakery. Some of us blog about politics, some about education, others on business and internet law, and still more about marketing, branding, public relations, conversations, web strategy, and millennials.

As time has passed the group has grown, bringing in more people that want to connect with this buzzing group. Many of the newcomers don’t have blogs, but they still find value in the Central Iowa Bloggers meetings because of the sense of community and the way the group helps one another out.

On the first Friday of every month I get to spend a few hours over coffee and a breakfast sandwich with some of the brightest, most helpful, most talented, and friendliest people I know—and it all started with a few bloggers blogging.

As everyone—including myself—have gotten caught up in social media and Shiny New Object syndrome, I’m setting a goal for myself to get back to my roots and back to blogging. This is where it started and this is where it will continue.

Have you ever been to a Central Iowa Bloggers event? What do you take away from those gatherings? And if you’re a blogger, what keeps you coming back to blogging?

[Photo courtesy of Joe Hobot]

To recommend a city (like Des Moines!) to be added to the Foursquare service, add your request here.

From the Foursquare post on Tumblr, the team confirms that the additional cities were driven by fans:

Just so you know, we choose which cities to launch based on the feedback we get from users. [I]f your hometown didn’t make the list this time, stay tuned… we’re just getting warmed up over here.

For now Des Moines area users are still marooned among several surrounding cities, including Minneapolis, MN and Chicago, IL (in addition to Omaha and Kansas City).

When do you think the online userbase of Des Moines will grow large enough that we get included in initial launches of sites like this? What does that number look like?

Also, Silicon Prairie News grabbed a video interview with Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley.

]]> http://mikethoughts.com/2009/10/15/still-no-one-playing-foursquare-in-des-moines/feed/ 0 http://mikethoughts.com/2009/10/13/old-technology-libraries-becoming-new-technology-hubs/ http://mikethoughts.com/2009/10/13/old-technology-libraries-becoming-new-technology-hubs/#comments Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:15:11 +0000 Mike Templeton http://mikethoughts.com/?p=199 I remember my hometown library fondly. It was a place I went each week during my early years of school to check out new books and materials. I even remember accessing the sophisticated-for-its-time computer systems that were slowly eroding the index card files. However, all other memories aside, the defining characteristic about the library was that it was a place for old technology. It was a place that let you borrow books, VHS tapes and casettes, and certainly not a center of innovation. Today all that is changing.

Changing needs, changing technologies

As the internet has become increasingly more accessible over the years, many would say that the reliance on printed materials has decreased. Being that libraries are run by groups of smart people, they’ve been able to stay ahead of the game and grow their available services to cater to the changing needs of patrons. Now when I visit my local library (Kirkendall Public Library), I’m greeted by much more than books. They’ve got walls of CDs and DVDs, plus an entire quadrant of computers, all ready for use by visitors.

Same game, new tools

The concept of the library is still the same – a place with an expert staff managing a wealth of reference materials – but the tools and technology have changed. One example of this change is the recent surge in use of social media by libraries across the country. In fact, the Daily Herald recently wrote about a number of libraries around Chicago that are taking up residence online in order to better connect with their patrons and their peers. And they’re not just connecting with their audience, but they’re also teaching their audience how to use the tools themselves.

The best part of the Herald article is that they don’t paint the libraries’ involvement in social media as part of a fad. The story mentions that some got started out of a need to maintain relevancy, but the core driving factor was to support the needs and capabilities of their patrons.

Connecting is at the core of social media

Michael Stephens, assistant professor of library and information science at Dominican University in River Forest, tells his students to remember that “while these social networks are a technology, their prime value is allowing humans to connect with each other.”

This simple concept is something that so many entering social media today get wrong. Social media is not about repainting an old message and throwing it back into the marketplace. Social media is about communicating and connecting with others through a medium that levels the playing field.

If age-old libraries are learning to adjust and leverage these new modes of communication, what is your excuse?

Why only 12 seconds?

This one comes straight from the 12seconds team: “Because anything longer is boring.”

And they’re right. We are a culture that craves brevity.

12seconds is to YouTube as Twitter is to blogging

The 12seconds service was born out of the same vein as Twitter, which lowers the risk of participating by limiting the character length of messages posted. People flock to Twitter over a once more common platform called a blog (do you remember those?) because it requires less time commitment. Tweets are shorter, take less time to read, literally anyone can post a 140 character message and getting started on the service takes less than a minute. When you compare getting started with a blog, you’ve got to think about what it will focus on, what the domain will be, where you will host it, what platform you will use, etc.

12seconds takes the same streamlined approach to online video that Twitter takes to sharing conversations. To sign up for the service you just need a username and a password, or you can create an account using Facebook Connect or your Twitter username.

You don’t even have to worry about what your videos will be about, because the 12seconds team does an awesome job of prompting users with idea. And, prompting 12seconds users means more than the proverbial “What are you doing?” opener as seen on Twitter. The site hosts a daily 12seconds challenge which generates user videos that participants rank, plus they employ the 12erator tool which generates random questions or thoughts to spur a video response.

12seconds has everything in place

For nearly any feature you can think of, 12seconds has done it. Want to import friends from other services? Want to upload a video from your computer? Want to distribute your videos effortlessly across other social networks? Want to know how many people are viewing your videos? Done, done, done and done.

From my perspective, 12seconds has it all. They’ve nailed the posting interface, have a robust API, distribute content across the social web, facilitate user interaction, have their own iPhone app and love their community.

If you are running a startup or are part of an existing business, take a look at how the 12seconds team has covered all the angles. What are you missing in your business?

Tune in for some short fun of your own

Stop over at 12seconds and spend a few minutes browsing through the videos. You can find my channel under my name. And for a local master of pithy videos, watch some of John Pemble‘s clips.

What I’ve been up to as a Director of Social Media

From March until September of this year I worked as the Director of Social Media and Web Strategies for the Iowa Hospital Association.

I was brought on board to lead developments in social media for the organization, including educating their staff on effective uses and putting into practice a strategy for IHA.

My role built upon the training and groundwork laid out by Nathan Wright and Hillary Brown of Lava Row. Our goals were to strengthen relationships with association members, highlight the successes of Iowa hospitals and promote health care careers in the State of Iowa.

As we worked towards accomplishing these goals, IHA put several initiatives into motion:

• started a blog to track legislative issues, happenings in the workforce and hospital successes
• launched a Twitter account to relay hospital-related information and to connect with hospital advocates
• hosted hospital celebrations across the state
• talked with hospital employees on camera about their careers and sought advice for interested students

IHA saw lots of positive response from individuals and hospital leaders, with many people engaging in these mediums for the first time. Overall it was a great experience for me and it gave me the chance to work in an industry I had previously known nothing about. I also had my first experience working on a Macbook Pro.

UPDATE: For some perspective, here’s my post from when I started the job at the Iowa Hospital Association.

Where my journey is taking me next

Though I can’t reveal too many details surrounding my new role, I can say that it will be centered in the social media space and that I’ll be working with several other bright minds in the area. As people starting rolling into the office and other pieces come together I will share more. Hopefully I will have additional information in the coming weeks.

Can we rely on our contacts as filters?

Though I do want to associate with those latter groups, the sheer size of the group membership on LinkedIn makes them nearly impossible to derive value from. True I can browse the members page to see which of my connections are also members, but LinkedIn doesn’t provide a very good way to find the best discussions in a group (especially in the email digest). I can sort by most recent or most comments, but what would happen if LinkedIn were to take a page from Facebook’s playbook and leverage the social graphs of my friends to pick out what I would like most?

For all I know this type of recommendation engine could be in the works at LinkedIn, but I think finding a better way to filter through content could drive many more people through LinkedIn’s doors. Facebook does a great job recommending who I should be friends with and what they like the most, but wouldn’t that be even more meaningful in a professional environment?

LinkedIn means business, literally

I use LinkedIn specifically because it takes the personal chatter and noise out of the conversation. I don’t have to weed through photos or the recounts of a day’s worth of food just to find what I am looking for. The content is right there in front of me. All I need is a better tool with which to mine it.

Many people have said that RSS is dead, and that Twitter seems to be replacing it as a source of news. I don’t think that RSS is dead any more than the next technology, but what Twitter provides is a human-powered filtering system to only provide what we are most interested in. We follow those who follow what we like, and that’s what we get. LinkedIn is headed down that path by allowing us to join grouped discussions related to our interests, but allowing us to rely on our friends to sift through all of that information would make the network even better.

What would make LinkedIn better for you?