Posts Tagged “branding”

It’s not every day you go to a social media event in a cargo container sponsored by a shoe company and hear somebody invoke Thoreau when talking about Twitter. Today was just such a day.

But first, I’ll back up to last night, when J (have I mentioned lately that she has an excellent food blog?) joined me at an Earthwatch.org’s shidig at Puma City. (Puma City is a batch of cargo containers assembled into a retail and party space in a temporary “village” set up in South Boston to celebrate the arrival of the Volvo Ocean Race and it lacks indoor plumbing) We sipped melon puree and watched the sunset while listening to Earthwatch CEO Ed Wilson talk about the state of the world’s oceans. The event was well-attended and raised money and awareness for Earthwatch’s programs. Also, they served tasty but lukewarm mini open-faced cuban sandwiches and raffled off some cool prizes. Having already won a gift card at Four Burgers that day, I couldn’t be too upset at missing out.

Barely 12 hours later, I returned to Puma City for Social Media Breakfast 13, Rocking the Boat. Founded by Bryan Person and recently organized by the estimable Bob Collins, SMB has reliably been one of the better live events for those who live online.

The first presenter was Dan Schwabel, a young man who has the admirably meta occupation of promoting his personal brand as “the guy with a personal brand.” He observed at one point that he chose marketing because he was “creative and not that great at math,” which I think sort of sums up much of what’s wrong with marketing these days. I bet Dan isn’t really that bad at math, but I also think that people like FM Days are trying to rescue marketing from the folks who are afriad of or (perhaps willfully) ignorant of the numbers.

Next up, George Grattan, Marketing Strategist at Earthwatch took the stage. I use the term, “stage” loosely, as the sight lines inside a space made of cargo containers are a little rough. Anyway, George talked about Earthwatch’s social media strategy, which includes a lot of Facebook and Eons (because their target is a little older) and no Twitter yet. Grattan quoted Thoreau on the subject of the transatlatic telegraph wire to explain this choice:

We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough.

The idea being, until Earthwatch has something to say on Twitter, they will remain quiet. I just hope George has grabbed the username. As I’ve discussed and as I’m sure Dan would agree, you have to register your brand on every network you can, even if you’re not going to use them, just as a protective measure.

I’m skeptical that Earthwatch really has nothing to say to the people of Twitter. After all, they are actually somewhat older that the Facebook generation and probably closer to Earthwatch’s demographic. But more to the point, how different is what Earthwatch has to say on Twitter from what they have to say on Facebook or on their blogs? (They do have blogs, don’t they? George, call me!) With tools like Ping.fm, Friendfeed, and Twitterfeed, you can syndicate content you already have into all kinds of channels at minimal extra cost or effort. Sure, that’s not the level of engagement that your customers really want and deserve, but isn’t it better than nothing? You can start building your Twitter following by pushing your Facebook status and blog updates there, so when you are ready for full-on Twitter engagement, you’re partway there. To use an ironic metaphor, Earthwatch should fish where the fish are.

The last two presenters, Roger Wu and C C Chapman deserve blog posts of their own, and I’m sure many others will provide. In short, Roger’s company Klickable.TV is doing some cool stuff with videos that you can click on and the data that those generate. (Roger, does Rachel Ray know you’re clicking on her like that?) CC is a social media fixture for good reason. Check out his site, blogs, podcasts and so forth whenever you can.

I’m on the verge of being halfway through Tangyslice’s insane quest for social media greatness. I scraped together a few more sites that I was already signed up for and added a few here and there, and my total appears to stand at 49. I’m getting into the long tail, or in some cases, the stuff that drops out from under the long tail. It’s always hard to know what’s going to catch on, but half these sites appear to add absolutely no value. Here are twenty more social media type sites waiting for the bubble to burst.

1. friendfeed – As Tangyslice would say, YAA (Yet Another Aggregator); I would call it YANVAA (Yet Another No-Value-Added Aggregator)
2. Get Satisfaction – “People Powered Customer Service for Absolutely Everything” – watch this one, there could be something here. I like power to the people.
3. going.com – People I might run into and places I might go. Mash this up with something geocoded and mobile and maybe we’ll talk.
4. grono.net – “one of the biggest web communities in Poland” – the English version is incompletely translated so I ended up saying I was in Białystok. Go figure.
5. HelloTxt – One of several sites (see also Ping.FM and their oh-so-exclusive beta) that exist only to push your drivel into deeper crevices of the internet.
6. hi5 -Maybe wants to be facebook when it grows up, but happy to sell ads till then. *yawn*
7. identi.ca -I have to go to Canada and declare all my microdrivel under creative commons? Why?
8. istockphoto – If a stock photo site wants to become a social media site, don’t you think they should let you upload your own avatar picture and resize it for you?
9. Kiva – Another really good site that’s adding social media for no particular reason. The important connection here is between lenders and borrowers, isn’t it?
10. kwippy – Why? Why??
11. Last.FM – Maybe if it were Last.DK I would be as excited by this as Tangy is. Give me my geek-fan podcasts any day.
12. MyBlogLog – YAA. Probably YANVAA, but I can’t figure out all the bells and whistles.
13. Netvibes – OK, it’s nicer than my google hompage. But my google homepage is my google homepage.
14. newsvine – Oddly, I’ve been a member of this site for a long time. I don’t remember signing up, or why.
15. Profilactic – YAA supporting 186 sites. One Hundred and Eighty Six.
16. Socialthing! – YANVAA! But at least the little mascot critter has cute googly eyes, not a bone where its head should be.
17. soup.io – YANVAA.io
18. trig -”A community for creative people with images, blogs, music, trends, etc. Yeah, we could say all that. But what we really imagine is a place where people like their music loud, their opinions edgy and their life brave.” Keep imagining. The loud edgy people are on myspace.
19. wis.dm – The site that asks, “can you live without Starbucks?” I’m not sure but I bet I can live without wis.dm.
20. YouTube – You can tune into the limeduck channel. Don’t you feel special?

See the first 29 networks in my catalog here.

If you’ve been following Tangyslice’s desperate quest for social media coolness, you know that he’s going on a social media bender, trying to join 100 social sites in 30 days. Back in art school, I worried about the people who seemed to be more interested in cameras and lenses than in the photos they produced. Content is king, I say. If you’ve got nothing to say, you’ve got nothing to tweet, nothing to blog, nothing to shout, and ultimately, nobody to friend.  [I suppose it's possible that in social media terms you can reverse that last bit to "if you've got no friends, it doesn't matter what you have to say." See my recent attempt to explain Twitter for more mulling on that.]

That said, I took up Tangy’s gauntlet and took stock of my social media memberships, and then joined a few more to see what’s what.  After all, his misguided Spurlockian stunt comes in part from my declaration that I’ll join almost anything just to secure the limeduck name against poachers. (Yes, I flatter myself to imagine that they might exist. Allow me some self-indulgence here, it’s my blog after all.)

It turns out that I have accounts on at least 29 social media and networking sites: (and even as I type this, I realize there are a few more…)

Social networks I actually use. There is original and timely content or information here because I log in frequently and maintain information.

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Twitter

Marginal social networks. I log into these once in a while because they’re very specific or because I have a few important contacts unique to them.

• Technorati
• Plaxo
• Flickr

Insurance social networks. I maintain membership here because I believe its important to have updated information there just in case, or because I know some people search there or have contacts there.

• Spock
• Myspace
• Gather

Vertical social networks. These are very specific, maybe too specific, but I joined them to check them out and they seem to have some useful effect in keeping connected with topics of interest.

• Cork’d
• 9 Neighbors
• Foodbuzz
• Tripadvisor
• Stylefeeder

Social bookmarking sites. I just don’t use them much except occasionally to try and promote my site or a friend’s site.

• Digg
• Newsvine
• Stumbleupon
• Reddit

Repeater and aggergator sites. These are places where I have a profile that does nothing other than repeat or consolidate the RSS feed(s) from some of the sites I actually use and from limeduck.com. I’m here just in case one of these gets big and to protect the limeduck brand.

• Friendfeed
• HelloTXT
• Utterz
• Tumblr
• Pownce

OK, I admit it, I have no idea what these sites are for. I just joined them to try and stay ahead of Tangyslice.

• Plurk
• Humble Voice
• Trig
• Bebo
• Xanga
• Virb

Do I feel 29 times better?  Do I  have 29 times more to say?  Does this get me 29 times more traffic and search awareness?  Hardly.  Are there useful sites I haven’t discovered?  Almost certainly.  I’ll be disappointed if there are no comments alerting me to sites I’ve cruelly omitted.

Watch this space for updates.  Or any of the other 29 spaces.

Book Club: Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris

Love the blog, now bought the book: Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds

Don’t know why:  A Tranquil Star by Primo Levi

For work:  BrandSimple by Allen Adamson

Trying to drink the cool-aid:  Conscious Business by Fred Kofman

Can’t stop listening to:  Little Fluffy Clouds by The Orb

So I got back yesterday from presenting at the Baptie Marketing Focus Conference to discover that my loyal team of marketeers had been busy on an integrated marcomm project: redecorating my office, apparently in honor of my birthday.

The first thing I noticed right away was that somebody had put a live potted plant on my desk. That was totally out of place. Then I noticed what was next to it.

I had come in on the redeye, and I had taken some medicine to help me sleep on said redeye, so the pinata actually had to be pointed out to me.

But I had little trouble finding the brownies and sorted M&Ms among the beads, straws and glow-sticks.

Those who know me might think that this was going to set me off, that I like my space the way I like it and don’t move my cheese and all that.

Those who know me well know that I’ve been waiting for this for years. As a middle manager, I could hardly go around pranking peoples offices, but now the seal has been broken, so I say, GAME ON!

But seriously, this was very gratifying. I love working with creative people who know how to be silly when they want to, and know just how too far to go, even when I’m in the midst of their performance reviews. And you don’t do this stuff to people you don’t like. They really [sob] really like me.

Now comes the part where I look the gift horse in the mouth and try to find a teachable moment in this kind act of randomness. There’s a point here and I’m going to belabor it.

What’s with all the orange, you ask? I’m not Dutch. Not Ulster Irish. Not even Ukrainian. Didn’t go to Princeton. This blog is limeduck not orangepenguin. What gives?

I seem to have developed a reputation for liking the color orange. I drive an orange car, which I bought largely because it came in orange. That’s a big one. I don’t wear orange that often but I have an orange suitcase (it’s easy to spot on the carousel) and briefcase. I have some orange things (sheets, towels, shower curtain, rugs) at home but none of my team has ever been over. But at the office, I have been known to advocate for orange logos, to hoard orange whiteboard markers and to sort my M&Ms by color before eating them. (It’s important to state for the record that I like to sort them; I do not have to sort them.) I have a chair that’s red according to the maker but sure does look orange in the fluorescent light. I think bright colors stimulate activity and creativity at work – that’s not so crazy, is it?

So it’s clearly part of the brand called me. I don’t think I could shake it at this point even if I went cold turkey on orange. But at what point do I become a parody or a one-note joke? That’s part of the subtle magic that separates the good from the great. I hope I’m on the right side of that divide. I’m going to think about that while enjoying a plastic coconut full of Fanta.

Stay safe and don’t forget to lock your office door while you’re away.