Tactical Transparency

Geoff Livingston Interview

Had a killer interview with Geoff Livingston on my Tactical Transparency show last week (listen below).  I found this picture of him and thought it was excellent, although I promised Geoff I wouldn't tease him about the glowing red orb he's got erupting from his right eyebrow (I believe it's a gland thing).

Seriously, however, I'm a huge fan of Geoff's and there are a number of reasons why:

1. He's really freaking smart.
2. He's humble, even though he's a very popular media guru type (but don't call him that).
3. He's freaking hi-larious.
4. He's willing to say things others won't (check out his Social Media Really is Dead Post).
5. He liked my book (that's manly a value add for me).
6. His focus (per our interview) is growing CRT/tanaka (where he works) over and above building his personal brand. 

Let's focus on that last point.  I'm paraphrasing what Geoff said, but basically he pointed out that he feels his job is to always focus on clients first and make sure that if he ever leaves CRT/tanaka that the equity he's built in his tenure there stays versus leaving with him because he's tried to focus attention mainly on his personal brand.

Clients what now?  At the expense of eschewing the all important brand of ME?  Shocking.  But oh so liberating and refreshing to hear.

We talked about augmented reality for a while and Geoff and I commiserated that the convergence of mobile and GPS technology along with the semantic web basically is the next big thing.  Or the next three big things in a mashup that we're all still trying to figure out but will still have about three to five years where we'll get to explain to clients / brands what the hell augmented reality means. 

Those conversations will be fun.  Instead of dealing with folks saying, "Why should I get on Twitter?  I don't care what someone ate" we'll get to hear: "Do I really need to geo-tag my brand's products via an internationally recognized semantic taxonomy?  Can't I just buy a banner ad?"

We also discussed how "good" PR firms/agencies are working to integrate various departments for the overall good of the client.  Sacrifice silos for (insert good farm analogy here) and combine talents to work around one central strategy that everyone gets excited about.  And if a client has one AOR but uses others for PR, etc, their will be friendly or other competition to create the best ideas to keep clients happy.  There's a really good article in PR week (you need a subscription to read the whole thing) on this topic, by the way, called: Brands Get Creative with Integrated Marketing. It's an interesting read.

So thanks again to Geoff for a hootenanny good time of an interview and I look forward to more.

And, for link baiting's sake, SOCIAL MEDIA IS DEAD.

Just kidding.  It's actually been beaten into a soapy froth on the cheese grated hide of a long-expired ex-horse.

David Alston / Radian6 Interview

As I mentioned in the post below, I had the chance to interview David Alston and Geoff Livingston on Thursday.  I wanted to start with a short post and say thanks to David of Radian6 for his insights.

Suffice to say I'm impressed with how well Radian6's technology helps brands, PR firms, etc truly hear, evaluate and utilize the conversations being shared about their products/services online.  However, I have to say that as a somewhat jaded (been in 'new media' since 2005) practicioner and preacher of the benefits of social platforms, it was really refreshing to head David talk about how appreciated he and Radian6 are when customers say nice things about them online.  I'm misquoting him (listen to the interview below or on my Tactical Transparency show page on BlogTalkRadio for his exact words), but essentially he said near the end of the interview that if people want to know about Radian 6 he will often tell them to Google 'Radian 6' and have potential customers/whoever make their own decision about their company from what they read on the first few pages of Google.

How well would you or your organization fare if your main opinion was formed by others with what hits came up on Google?  There's some fireworks to blow your mind.

Lastly we talked about Radian6's new interface for live events called Twebinars.  I participated in the event Radian6 did (The Rockstars of Social CRM) with Chris Brogan (who helped invent the idea) and it was pretty cool.  They used Ustream in the upper left hand corner and had a moderator tweet questions while people were requested to hastag their answers.  The effect made me feel like I was on Tweetdeck or Seesmic but the content was specific to the event at hand.  I think this will be an excellent tool for brands and for the myriad communicator-types within org's saying, "I don't get Twitter."  My answer - try a twebinar and you can calculate your ROI (at least in terms of immediate engagement) in the hour or two it takes you to run an event.

Here's David's Show:

Interviews with David Alston of Radian 6 and Geoff Livingston tomorrow

Two great interviews tomorrow if you can tune in or call during the shows:

David Alston, VP of Marketing and Community for Radian6. Radian 6 is a "Social media monitoring & engagement platform for PR, marketing and customer support professionals." They are the rage at every conference I go to as of late (like Blogwell, etc) and David was kind enough to indulge me some time to chat on how brands are using their services to make decisions on how and where to spend money for social/digital campaigns.

The interview is tomorrow at 11 AM EST on my BlogTalkRadio show on Tactical Transparency. You can call in to ask questions at: (347) 215-8467.

At 1PM EST I'll be interviewing Geoff Livingston, Senior Vice President at CRT/tanaka. I am a fan of Geoff's work (and not just because he gave Tactical Transparency a nice review a while back - a favor which I still need to return for his excellent work, Now Is Gone) and am very intrigued to pick his brain on his thoughts about mobile services like BrightKite along with social media monitoring and money questions in general. Geoff is a recognized social media guru and definitely worth a listen/call.

Tomorrow at 1PM EST on my BlogTalkRadio show on Tactical Transparency. You can call in to ask questions at: (347) 215-8467.

Look forward to having you join in and chat in the text room or listen/call in.