Tactical Transparency

Jeff Pulver's 140 Character's Conference

Had fun at Jeff Pulver's 140 Characters Conference Networking Party.  Took this picture while Jeff Pulver stood above us--I faced the other direction and took a picture of everyone watching Jeff which is the type of thing I enjoy doing.  It cracked me up but was completely appropriate that a guy was punching his iPone/BB and likely tweeting while Jeff was speaking.  The combination of in-person and on-device activity at these things (myself included) always strikes me as ironic and funny.  So I'll call it irunny or fionic.

By the way, I have not blogged/posted for a while so I'll just note that versus having you look at the next post and say, "Wow, no posts since February?" As a rule my focus is on writing proposals and working my tucus off at BlogTalkRadio versus posting, but I'd like to turn that around a bit.  I'm finding a lot of similiar behavior at a lot of our pitches in terms of where brands are in regards to moving forward on social media.  See if you've heard phrases like these in recent meetings with folks in large brands contemplating social media:

• "We're just dipping our toes into social media at this point."
• "We're worried about the extra work we'll have to take on creating content, etc for social media."
• "What the hell is Twitter?"

I find it difficult to be patient at times, especially with the notion that a platform and paradigm as powerful as social media continues to take a back door to banners and other online advertising that isn't rich or content laden at all.  The relevant posts or casts of creators or community take a back seat to clicks.  And ad dollars still go towards the mediums that have proven successful in the past (or so we all tacitly agreee) and people don't want to move forward and take risks. Yet a lot of the ROI of doing these social media campaigns is in reaching more directly, fruitfully, relevantly and deeply to your consumers and employees.

So for now I guess I'll keep pitching.

Transparency Videos and our Survey

Click to see our Two Minute Transparency Videos currently featuring Howard Greenstein and Daniel Patterson.  We'll be adding more as time goes along.  Have two minutes to talk about what you think being Media 2.Open means?  We'd love your videos, so send them to John. 

We've also put together a Transparency Survey we'd love your thoughts on if you have five minutes.  We've tried to keep it simple and quick.  I'd tell you we're giving away an iPod to one of the hundred people that fills it out, but in the spirit of integrity in blogging and all that, that's probably not going to happen.  However, we will be posting the results of the survey, and if you include your name/email/URL, we'll print that and link to it, too.  We're big on Google Juice for people who support us.