Category: social capital exchange

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causes social capital exchange social media socialmedia

Paying a Charity in Exchange for your Attention

Lee Dryburgh has “called me out” to help in an effort to raise money for a shelter group in the Bay Area, the Shelter Network. In his blog he calls upon me, and a list of social media ‘gurus’ to promote his conference mailing list, and for each person who signs up to the eComms Conference list, they’ll donate fifty cents. There’s more about this in his article. (eComms is a conference about telecom and communication – so if you’re in that space and you can handle 4 emails a month, why not take a minutue to act?)

It is a bit of a bold strategy, calling on all of us to promote his conference in the context of helping a charity at the same time. I’m not sure I love the strategy, actually, but it is bold and it has the potential to be a new model:

  • Paying for mailing lists =”tired”
  • Paying a charity in exchange for people’s attention = “wired?”  (Or even Causewired?)

Lee’s article is below – go read it, sign up (and tell them where you found out about it, eh?).

Social Media: Can it Raise Just 5000.00 Dollars to Help 5 Year Olds? – Emerging Communications Blog

Let’s have a public test of the effectiveness of social media. Let’s do it with the aim of measuring the reach and usage of social media (and hopefully with some serendipity regarding the results). Let’s do it in a way that helps us understand the role and significance of social media on the emerging communications landscape.

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causes LinkedIn social capital exchange social media socialmedia

Chuck Hester and the Pay it Forward Chronicles

I profiled Chuck Hester of iContact in this piece about using Live Connections to Leverage Virtual Connections back in February. Now Chuck is taking his experiences with LinkedIn and writing a book on  “Linking In to Pay it Forward: Changing the Value Proposition in Social Media.”  His blog has one neat idea today:

THE PAY IT FORWARD CHRONICLES: The Small Good, A New Book and A Busy Fall

First the Small Good. A concept that I first ran across earlier this year as I listened to a podcast. Here’s the basic premise:

Someone has a need, an issue, a problem. They come to you for help. From your prospective it takes little effort to help this person – maybe a referral to a tax attorney you know or a tip on how to get better publicity for your company.

To the person your helping, it’s HUGE! You have saved them time, money, worry – whatever that may be.

My Small Good for the day is letting you know about this. I hope it provides you good value and something to think about.

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blogging marketing PR social capital exchange social media socialmedia

Meme of the week – Blacklisting Bloggers and bad PR pitches

What seems to have come to a head over the last few days is the concept of Bloggers “blacklisting” PR firms that pitch them in a way they don’t want to be pitched. Gina Trapani of LifeHacker published a wiki listing PR firms that have spammed her with pitches. Suddenly, everyone’s taking sides over how to properly pitch bloggers.

Sidenote: the history of blacklists is much more serious and a heavier topic than is being given credit in all this banter about them. They’re an attempt at keeping people from acting in a certain way due to social and societal pressure, and they’re against the spirit of what I see as social media. Blacklisting spammers is, to me, appropriate, because they’re clearly flaunting law and culture. What I see many bloggers and PR professionals ranting about it not blacklisting but a lack of transparency and accountability.

Geoff Livingston seems do be quite reasonable in his analysis of the situation.

Nasty actions like publicly outing PR professionals and firms hurt real people. Bloggers (and some reporters) often act without professional ethics or thinking about how these acts affect others. I got one thing to say back to you: Take responsibility for your words and stop harming people.

Jeremy Pepper clarifies the whole Gina Trapani story, noting it was her personal email address being spammed. He also notes that junior staff at PR firms aren’t being trained and supervised not to make these mistakes. And, in typical Jeremy humor, he has a plan worth reading.

Jason Falls of Social Media Club Louisville notes that the bloggers themsevles need to be blacklisted –

I am saying that a journalist (or a blogger for that matter) who publicly humiliates someone just trying to do their job – even poorly – or goes a step further by declaring that person’s employer on a permanent banned list is performing the adult (though not mature) equivalent of Chris Hargensen ordering up buckets of pigs blood to be dumped on Carrie White at prom.

Jason makes a very good point. Not everyone at the firm that spammed you is an outright idiot. But just as we, as bloggers shouldn’t blindly blacklist PR firms, PR firms shouldn’t blacklist journalists.

Of course, Aaron Brazell is happy to be on a blacklist, because he doesn’t want to be pitched, unless a PR pro has created “some kind of professional rapport” with him. He also notes a possible solution:

I think it’s high time that the PR community finance the creation and support of a third party broker that would maintain the authenticity, privacy, trust and relationship with the blogging comunity. I’m talking about an OpenID sort of trust-based system that includes the trust-relationship management as well as a CRM tool/plugin-in for sending communications in a standardized way. This tool would provide the recipient a means of “opt out” as well as trust-based ratings, reviews, advocacy and management.

Aaron’s solution is interesting and thought-provoking. I’d like to hear more.

Jason Kintzler over at PitchEngine discusses some ways that PR professionals can more effectively get the word out including Social Media/New Media Releases, and remembering that news distribution can be effectively done via the wire services. Pitching to people requires a different tact.

Again, I go back to transparency and accountability. Sending an email to lots of people pitching something irrelevant is timewasting and is potentially asking for someone to ‘out’ your pitch. Contacting people in the way the provide for you, being clear about who and what you represent is clearly a way to get some respect.

Finally, I’ll publically state that I’m happy to hear a PR or Blogging professional’s pitch, via my email, or via the huge “Call Me” button I keep handy on the side of my website, as long as said professional has looked at my blog enough to know what interests me. I’m also on Twitter if you want to hit me that way.

UPDATE: Seems I missed something that helped start this whole thing, in which someone from Brian Solis’ team did something wrong, and Brian made an apology and some distinctions that are quite relevant.

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blogging marketing social capital exchange social media social media socialmedia

Mommy Bloggers tell Social Media Specialists how to reach them…are you listening?

If you haven’t read the latest installment in the life of “Queen of
Spain” it is a wake up call for anyone who thinks they can fake being
part of a community and ‘influence’ it. Required reading.

So You Want To Talk To Mommybloggers…

So You Want To Talk To Mommybloggers… So basically there are these big ‘ol corporations who are just salivating to get their money grubbing claws into women online.

It gets more harsh from there.

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Business marketing social capital exchange social media Uncategorized

When does introducing simplicity or constraint in design improve experience

From iPhone to sites like Fotolog (where you can only post one picture a day), constraint of design drives the user experience, and can also create popularity. Adam at Fotolog (and Scott) described how the constraint (or simplicity) of Just One Foto keeps the editorial imperative high, and it keeps the community different from Flickr (where you can post a HUGE number of pictures at any time). Communities like VOX where prompting people with the “Question of the Day” gives people something to blog about, in case the community member feels frozen or writer’s block – this ‘constraint’ bounds the experience and gives a place for writers to start.
Simplicity – making things easier for people to get over pain of adoption. People get overwhelmed with too many choices.

Skype – hard but gives people way to make free phone calls so people use it.

Adam – fotolog – doesn’t deny the appeal of the long tail, but too much or too many will reduce usage.

Pip Coburn’s model about getting people over pain of adoption – by giving them value.

Whether you call it restrictions, constraints, or simplicity, there’s something that helps people get over that pain of adoption. Rules vs Guidelines.

John B. – Everyone thinks they want infinite choice but it turns out they really don’t adapt well. Less choice can drive more behavior/purchase/etc.

Hardware guys ship and they’re done – web guys can iterate –

Games guys do this constraint thing well – give rewards, test a huge amount, watch user behavior.

Is Facebook Simple? Yes and no. The applications can be overwhelming, but the social dashboard, keeping track of friends, and photos is easy and well done.