I’m cool with “social marketing” and businesses’ presence in social networks. Obviously.

I like blog comments. A lot.

However, it seems I will forever cringe while reading comments on social marketing blogs.

What do you say we try a little experiment with this social marketing blog post!

[I should probably clarify, I've never had a problem with any comment on this blog. We don't get many, and they're are rarely, if ever, from the cringe-worthy marketing professionals you see elsewhere.]

Here’s my idea:

Shut out the centralized, public comments.

There are other places where you can commnet on this very post. Google Reader, Google Buzz, Twitter, Facebook, message boards, and other blogs. Heck, you can even talk about it offline! Hopefully, you already know plenty of people who want to hear your opinion of my ideas. People who want your answers to my questions. People who are interested to know which questions you find most interesting.

You’re not commenting just because you like people to see your name and link, right?

So, I’m going to offer a few ideas and questions, in conclusion. Now that you’ve read this post, start a discussion about it amongst the people who already know you. Feel free to invite me into your network to participate. Tell me I’m wrong to my face, it’s cool.

[I was trying to decide if I should leave the "trackbacks" (pingbacks) on.

Cindy offered, "One hazard of this suggestion is that it becomes the original author's (your) responsibility to report back to the blog audience on responses to posts. So then you're setting yourself up as a filter. Open comments avoid this problem; so do trackbacks. They promote transparency."

So, the comment thread can link back to those responding blog posts.]

Okay, then. Here are those questions:

• What does my post and this blog lose from closing the comments to this post?
• What do I gain? What do other readers gain? What do your blogs, and social circles gain by commenting “locally?”
• I’m drawing my line at posts about and for social marketing professionals. I’m not suggesting businesses using blogs to talk to their consumers should do anything like this. But could that line be better drawn some place else?

Let me know where you think.

Photo credit: Ed Yourdon

Q: I’m on the leadership team of a nonprofit, and we want to use Facebook to connect with potential donors and volunteers. Should we create a Page or a Group?

A: If you’re creating the official presence of an entity on Facebook — whether an organization or a business — you should create a Page.

Here’s how Facebook describes the difference between Pages and Groups:

Like a friend’s profile, Facebook Pages enable public figures, businesses, organizations and other entities to create an authentic and public presence on Facebook. Unlike your profile, Facebook Pages are visible to everyone on the internet by default. You, and every person on Facebook, can connect with these Pages by becoming a fan and then receive their updates in your News Feed and interact with them.

Authenticity is at the core of Facebook. Just as profiles should represent real people and real names, so too should Pages for entities. Only the official representatives of a public figure, business or organization should create a Facebook Page. …

While Pages were designed to be the official profiles for entities, such as celebrities, brands or businesses, Facebook Groups are the place for small group communication and for people to share their common interests and express their opinion. Groups allow people to come together around a common cause, issue or activity to organize, express objectives, discuss issues, post photos and share related content. …

(Thanks to @broganmedia for tweeting about this explanation.)

Pages have several features that Groups don’t. They can import an RSS feed into their Notes, so any blog posts your organization’s site generates could automatically be posted on your Facebook Page; they display visit, interaction, and fan demographic stats to Page administrators; and they have more flexibility in adding apps (including fundraising apps and store apps) and displaying information.

The next question we often hear is, “What if we already have a Group and want to switch to a Page?” There’s no easy way to make the transition. But you should transition anyway, to get the benefits of Pages. The sooner you make the change, the better.

Here’s what to do: Create your new Page, add information like your logo, photos, blog feed, and other content, then send a message to all the members of your Group that you are switching to a Page and the Group will be deleted. Invite the Group members to join you at the new Page; include a link to the Page so they find it easily. Send a second reminder about the switch a week later, and after two weeks send a final notice and delete the Group.

Then, work on creating great content and inviting participation on your new Page, so fans have a reason to visit often and interact with your organization and with each other.

Q: I want to start a blog for a particular population segment, and I’d like to get sponsors for the blog eventually. My question is this. If I start with a WordPress.com hosted blog just to get some content out there with a readership so that I can then approach sponsors, can I later convert it to a self-hosted blog? Or would it be better just to start as self-hosted? My hope is to start up without the initial cost coming out of my pocket. — Mary

A: It’s not hard to move a site from WordPress.com to your own hosted WordPress blog. WordPress has a built-in tool for exporting and importing. On WordPress.com you can use your own domain name (www.MyGreatSite.com) for a yearly fee, and you can change your site design/layout for a fee. Both are less expensive than the cost of hosting a blog yourself.

I recommend that you upgrade to using your own domain name at the very start. Then, if you eventually move to a self-hosted blog (or if you switch to any other hosted service) and you migrate your existing posts and pages to the new space, the posts will have the same URLs (web addresses, like http://www.bigbigdesign.com/2010/02/faq-how-should-i-start-my-blog/). This is important because Google and other search engines will have indexed the content of your site using those URLs; if the page address were to change, then the value of those indexed pages would be lost. Eventually the search engines would find the pages again, but your site rank would drop in the meantime, and your traffic with it. Using your own domain name helps you retain your site’s value. The cost for using your own domain name for your WordPress.com is about $10/year — a worthwhile investment. You’ll also have to pay a yearly fee to register the domain name.

The design of the blog may not be a big deal when you’re just getting used to blogging — or indeed ever. The blog content you write is the important part.

Two key things you cannot do with Wordpress.com are run Google Analytics and run your own ads. The concern about not having Google Analytics is that on WordPress.com your traffics statistics will be limited to those WordPress.com provides for you. These show you the basic number of hits and visitors per day. If your prospective sponsors wanted to know more than your raw traffic counts, you’d have some challenges.

WordPress.com says that in the future you’ll be able to show your own ads on your blog. If that happens, then using the hosted WordPress.com will become much more appealing.

Photo credit: “Britain Going Blog Crazy – Metro Article” by Annie Mole on Flickr

What impacts are right around the corner?
Organizations that choose to do so are already able to run circles around the web using these real-time technologies. I expect that some will do so and many will not. It will be like the difference between organizations that developed an effective web or email presence early vs. those that did not.

“If organizations want to be relevant and effective, they will need to incorporate some elements of real-time information delivery into their work flow. Be that pushing real-time updates out to their websites and supporters, consuming updates on breaking news in their sector in real time, or collaborating remotely in real time. Using only the parts of the web that you must refresh for updates, when you remember to do so, be they email or web pages, will soon feel like putting your ear up to a tin can with a string connecting it to some other tin can far away.

“I don’t mean to say that everything will be real time and you must always live in that flow, but I do believe it’s fast becoming an essential form of engagement. Not just because everyone is doing it, either, but because it’s really very useful.”

Excerpt from an interview with ReadWriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick about their “report on the real-time Web and how real time impacts the world of nonprofit organizations.” Lots of great information in the interview and in the report — not only for nonprofits but also for small business and independent professionals.

I’ll be writing more about the real-time web in the next few weeks. Stay tuned.

Social media? Isn't that just kids texting what they ate for lunch?

I’ll be speaking next Thursday to the Pittsburgh chapter of the IABC (International Association of Business Communicators). My topic is “Selling Social Media to Your Boss,” an update of the presentation I gave last October at PodCamp Pittsburgh 4.

You know social media is a great tool for marketing, customer feedback and developing valuable communities. Your boss thinks it’s a waste of resources – or even a danger to the organization. How should you make your case?

In this session, Cynthia Closkey of Big Big Design will discuss what managers and top-level executives need to know about social media and online networking, highlight resources for finding examples and statistics that carry weight and show you a simple plan for helping your organization move ahead.

The event is open to the public, held in downtown Pittsburgh from 7:30 to 9:30 on Thursday, January 21, 2010. Registration information and other details are here. I hope you can join us.

Lindsay Robertson, a freelance writer in New York, published an excellent list for publicists who want to connect with bloggers: “The Do’s and Don’ts of Online Publicity, For Some Reason.” It’s well worth reading and following this entire list of tips.

So often we emphasize what not to do when connecting with bloggers, so I love that this post highlights several things to be sure to do. If you were to do them, you’d have almost no chance of committing any of the Don’ts on the list.

Two in particular cover the majority of the advice:

Do’s #2. Pick Eight Blogs: Rather than reaching out haphazardly and trying to superficially connect with bloggers, choose eight blogs that cover your subject area and that you like personally, and actually read them consistently and become part of their community. (This is much easier to follow if you like the blogs in question. Also, eight is a random choice; I suspect that with more than 12 blogs you’ll have trouble keeping up if you represent more than a single client.)

Do’s #4. Build Relationships and Help the Blogger: (I’ve retitled this one to make it, I think, a little clearer.) Help the blogger and the blogger will help you.

A publicist should ask him or herself not “How can I get my news/content on a blog?” but “What news/content do I have that this blogger will want, but doesn’t even know it yet? And especially: what do I have that’s better than what this blogger has already found on his or her own?” To paraphrase the famous Dale Carnegie quote: when you go fishing, you don’t put what you want (strawberries) on the line, you dangle what the fish wants (worms).

This advice is easiest to follow if you employ Do #2 above. If you read the blogs consistently, you’ll know what each blogger wants to know, and what they have already discovered or haven’t yet heard about.

Cultivate a few relationships with a few key bloggers, and be sincere in the process. Everyone will win — you, the bloggers, and their readers.

Read Lindsay Robertson’s full post.

Photo credit: “065/365: Show us your smile!” by dotbenjamin

Email is both the most useful tool I have for communicating and the most problematic.

It’s useful because it’s inexpensive to send and receive, integrated with many of my other communication and information tools (websites, phone texting, calendar and contacts), and able to work with multiple media, from text to images to video to links.

Best of all, it’s asynchronous: I can send you a message when I think of something, without worrying about interrupting you, and you can respond when it’s convenient. We don’t have to schedule the communication or stop what we’re doing to interact.

Except… email often is an interruption, even a disruption. It comes in without stop (either scheduled or when I check mail, interrupting myself) and feels as urgent as a phone call or a person popping in the door. A single question can require hours of research to respond. And a long and winding email takes time to read and understand, before I even begin to respond to it.

A few years ago, Mike Davidson proposed “A Lo-Fi Solution to E-Mail Overload: Sentenc.es.” The idea is that one chooses to write emails of no more than five sentences each, and to link in the email to an information page that explains why the email is short.

This is a great solution as far as it goes. It forces me, as a sender, to limit the commitment I make to the response, much as writing a tweet limits me to think in a 140 character space rather than an essay. It suggests that if I have multiple topics to communicate about, I should send them in distinct emails (especially useful for my recipients who use the emails as to-do list items).

Would short emails take longer to write? Yes and no. I’ve found they do require more time for editing, but I believe the resulting message is clearer, and therefore should save time overall in the conversation. Moreover, once I’ve written a few short messages I feel I get into the swing of the style, and subsequent messages become easier. (Again, this is like writing on Twitter, where after a while you begin to use common phrasing and abbreviation, and keeping your character count down isn’t such a chore.)

But here’s the rub: I want the messages I receive to be as short as the messages I send. If a message needs to be long, it shouldn’t be a message at all — it should be an attachment (if it’s a bunch of data I need) or a conversation.

How can I convey to business associates that we’ll all benefit if we whittle our messages to their essences?

I could post this proposition in my email signature, but that would obviously make every message long, defeating the purpose in part.

One thought I’ve had is to create a policy page, similar to five.sentenc.es, that briefly explains the concept and list a guaranteed response time for emailers who keep their emails short. Would people read it? Would it seem too inflexible or draconian?

Do you think setting a two-way short-emails-only policy is a good idea, from a business standpoint? What alternatives do you see? How could one set and enforce such a policy?

UPDATE: For a solution to a different but related problem, check out Thanks No, mentioned in the comments to Davidson’s original post I linked above.

Classic Pepsi commercial from the 1960s

Pepsi has long been a major advertiser during the Super Bowl — the most expensive and widely-seen showcase for television advertising — but in 2010 they’re taking a different approach.

“Pepsi Benches Its Drinks,” Suzanne Vranica, Wall Street Journal 12/17/2009

In lieu of spending as much as $3 million for each 30-second ad during the Super Bowl broadcast — plus production costs — Pepsi is focusing its advertising strategy for soft drinks on a campaign that centers on community projects but also uses traditional and online advertising.

To implement its new strategy, Pepsi, based in Purchase, N.Y., will plunge into the crowded field of cause-related marketing in coming weeks with a campaign to kick off “Pepsi Refresh Project.” Under the program, Pepsi will award grant money for community projects proposed and selected by consumers, such as helping high-school students publish books to develop their writing skills. Pepsi says it has earmarked $20 million of its ad dollars for the grants next year.

This is a risky move for Pepsi, but it has already yielded some dividends in news stories (and blog posts like this one) about the change in approach. The new campaign looks to be aimed at creating a new image for Pepsi, beyond the “think young” message they have traditionally projected. Launching a grants-based project during an economic downturn will certainly be welcomed by community groups.

Big Big Design is a Favorite Place on Google

We received Big Big Design’s “Favorite Place on Google” sticker today, and I’m geekily excited.

The sticker is a window decal with a barcode that points to our business listing on Google and Google Maps. A person with a camera phone can scan the barcode to see our listing, including information we post there — hours, coupons and specials, reviews from customers or clients, photos and videos.

This is all free from Google, and it’s a nice tool set for any business or organization that has a local client or customer base. It’s part of a Google Local Business Center listing, which can act as a small and simple webpage for your business or as a landing page that points to your full website.

To get started, log in with a Google account (or sign up for a free Google account) and visit google.com/localbusinesscenter. Start out with just basic information, and add to it over time. You’ll also be able to see how many people are looking at your listing, searching for your business, and more.

Need help? Give us a call.

“teamwork” by jksphotos on Flickr

When I suggest to business people that they should consider blogging, the second most common objection I hear is that they don’t have anything to blog about.

(The most common objection I hear is that they don’t have time. It’s a real concern — I feel that way sometimes too — but one that’s solvable. I’ll address that in another post.)

Despite their objections, these business people do have worthy blogging topics. I know they do, because I sit in coffee shops. In a coffee shop, I hear people expounding on the news of the day, what they thought of the game the previous night, how their lives are going, how their businesses are doing. Each one has a unique take, information to share, insights.

When a person says he doesn’t have anything to blog about, what he usually means is that he doesn’t have anything earth-shaking to say. He may have a thought that is a slight twist or new interpretation, but not a major thesis on which to expound.

But blogging isn’t always about creating a whole new theory in each blog post. Often — usually — it’s about providing a unique take, sharing information, revealing an insight.

Often the most read and commented blog posts are the short ones, the posts that provide a bit of new information, no more than a busy person can absorb as they pass by in the midst of a busy day.

This is part of the success of Twitter: Anyone can write a single sentence. It’s also part of why people (particularly professional writers) are drawn to mini-blogging sites like Tumblr; they read an article or see a photo, and they want to add just a single thought and move on with the day.

For the quintessential example, see Seth Godin’s blog.

Those small ideas accumulate, within a single blog and in the web as a whole.

By the way, this is also the principle underlying Wikipedia. No one person knows everything on a topic, but any individual can help improve the Wikipedia entry on a topic, even if only to correct punctuation or grammar. Every contributor to Wikipedia is part of a distributed, virtual team, contributing a small part of a big result.

As a business person, you can add value to the information on the web by adding your perspective, your small but key insights. When you do that, you receive value back as well, in the form of connections with others involved in the conversation. You become part of the team.

What’s your take? Do you prefer short blog posts or longer essays (or is that not the right question)? How could you share your views more broadly? Do you have a reason not to contribute, not to be part of the team?