I have been thinking about the previous year and the things that I did and accomplished and the clients I worked for and the partners I collaborated with in business.  Overall, it was an exciting year for me and a year that so some growth and a year for learning.  I had the opportunity to make many new friends and some of those friends came from Hawaii.  I spent a wonderful week in May and June in Hawaii on the So Much More Hawaii Tour, and then organized a conference called the Social Media Business Summit in conjunction with Blog World & New Media Expo where I spent most of the year as their Social Media Director and Conference Director.  One By One Media was a title sponsor of the Social Media Business Summit in Hawaii and we enjoyed the time there.  I am wanting to go back now, not working, and not blogging or being a part of something work related besides enjoying the beach, the beautiful blue water and the waves crashing on the sand.

I was great meeting new friends while in Hawaii, like, Chris, Christine, Bruce Fisher and his wife, Neenz and Noe and Melanie, Marijane, Mark, and Aric, and Leah and Sheila and well you get the idea, it was a year of gaining friends and experiencing life.  Most of all it was becoming a part of a new community.

jim turner on ‘[re]think:hawaii’ from aric s. queen on Vimeo.

I will be recapping much of 2009 and some of what we accomplished as a company and will cover some of the initiatives for clients and how we grew in the world of social media consulting and social media management.

We will be soon relaunching Social Mediasphere Radio, with some new friends, which will also be a part of SMTV.  We are also going to have a new site here soon and we will refocus our efforts to be a trailblazer in the world of social media.  I have some events I will be speaking at soon and I will do a list of those so we may perhaps be able to meet and I will get a chance to make friends in another community.

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I have been keeping ahead of the game of new and shiny objects by trying out the latest and greatest in tools that can be used for social media programs at companies. I have always come back to the main point of view as it relates to tools that work.  I was reading a recent blog post by David Armano related to this very idea.  David states better than I can about dusting off some of the old tools before trying out new and shiny ones:

Your Blog(s): Your company is blogging. Congratulations. Is anyone listening? Blogging was the bright and shiny object of 2006-2008 and many companies found out just how hard it is to do well. Good blogging provides value. It is interesting and generates a healthy amount of comments and conversation which in turn generates a good dose of Google juice. It’s also terribly difficult to sustain. It requires cultural shifts within an organization, and has to be prioritized (read: made part of someone’s job). Frankly, I rarely see outstanding examples of a good company blog. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing (if it makes sense strategically), but doing it well is another story.

Many companies have still not taken on blogging as a tool that will work for them.  They have gone straight to Twitter or Facebook fan pages or none of the above as yet.  I am of the camp that blogs are a place to start, and a place to start a social media foundation.  I am dusting off the blog here and trying myself to get back into the swing of blogging for business.  This is the message I mention in most conversations.  Is you blog dusty?  Perhaps a little cleaning is in order and some attention given. Then you can go off to find a new and shiny tool.

Tags: Corporate Blogging, Professional Blogging, Bloggers For Hire, Social Media, Social Media Tools

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I am not yet an expert, but I am trying to learn to be an expert in my area.  This is why I read experts.  I pay attention to what they are doing and I learn from them. If I listen and store away what they are providing me I garner wisdom.  I read people from all walks of life, I read from the marketer, the advertiser, the public relations person and yes, the baker and candlestick maker.  All of the people I read and learn from provide me a path to the knowledge about how I can help other businesses.

If I comment on blogs and if I leave a question or provide another perspective on a post, it is because I have read the bit of wisdom and have participated.  It is not much different from sitting in a classroom and hearing a lecture and then participating in that lecture by commenting, asking questions or debating an issue.  This is my classroom and how I am hoping to earn my thousands of hours to get to be an expert in what I do (I think I only have 5 years or 10,000 more hours of study).

I tend to read a large number of blog posts.  In fact, I have more than one feed reader and they are broken down themselves into business reader and personal reader, and even that has some cross over between them so I even read some blogs twice just in case.  I try to absorb as much as possible from those around me I do consider an expert to help me get to the next level.  Comments foster learning just like it did in grade school when you wanted to know why clouds produced rain or why the sky was blue and all those things of wonder that come to your mind during class.  Ask questions, get involved, leave a comment.

Photo via Vito

Tags: Social Media Experts, Social Media, Blog Comments, Blogging, New Media

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I thought I would give you a taste of my new favorite Hawaiian singer and what we have heard just about everywhere here while in Hawaii. Enjoy!

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I stood on the bow of the catamaran and the wind and salt cleansed my face of stress and renewed my belief that you can truly feel the tension leaving your body. I was quiet except for the sea and the beauty before me.   I cannot begin to describe the surroundings and the feeling, so I will let you come and experience it yourself.

Raiders of the Lost Ark, King Kong, South Pacific, Six Days Seven Nights, and Jurassic Park, this is but a small list of the movies that have been filmed here in the beauty of Kauai.  I stood in my spot looking up to the cliffs and then waterfalls and the foam being formed by the waves crashing against the rocks and could see why the big screen wants this awe to be portrayed. I wanted to describe one more thing.  The water.

I had a hard time figuring out what color the water was here.  I had the opinion of others, a Navy Commander, a man from New Mexico and my other fellow travelers. They all said soe sort of blue, but I had to have a name of it. It was dark, but bright and had with it an awesomeness.  I could not think of the blue that I saw, then the Captain said a word.  A Hawaiian  word that triggered a response in my head.  It has nothing to d with color and in fact means "ginger" in the local language but if I had to put a crayon in  a box and put acolor on its side that emulates that color or blue, I had found he description–Awapuhi Blue.  With due respect to the local people and to Paul Mitchell, I had come up with a description and a catchy nam for my blue. Whenver i describe this blue, my own mind will drift to that colora dn then I will forever have it etched in my database.  Thank you Hawaii and to the land island of Kauai for this memory.

Tags: HawaiiHTA, Hawaii, Travel, Kauai, So Much More Hawaii

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The one where I get you to decide what I will do in Hawaii and then hopefully you too can go along…virtually.

I am hoping to live stream the events on my site at Social Mediasphere TV! I will record as much as possible the events that unfold. You choose where and what I go do it and bring you the experience through the live blog account, the recordings and Twitter stream!

The first island is up. KAUA’I
Currently scheduled to arrive Thursday morning, May 28; depart Saturday morning, May 30.

Mountain Tubing Adventure
Kaua‘i Backcountry Zipline Adventure Tour
Kaua‘i Plantation Railway
Kipu Falls Zipline Trek
K?loa Heritage Trail
L?wa‘i International Center
Steelgrass Farm – Chocolate Farm Tour
Waimea Canyon

If you know of something fun to do on this island that you don’t see here, suggest it in the comments and I will make it a vote that counts! My only suggestion is make it lawful. My wife’s suggestion, make it safe enough I won’t get killed. (I wont tell if you don’t tell.)

Next Up we go to the island of MAUI
Currently scheduled to arrive Saturday morning, May 30; depart Monday morning, June 1.

Hawai‘i Ocean Rafting
Hula Girl Pacific Rim Dinner Cruise
Kahoma Ranch Tours
Lahaina K?‘anapali Railroad – Sugar Cane Train
Maui Cave Adventures
Maui Horseback Tours
Nightly Hula Show at K?‘anapali Beach Hotel
Proflyght Paragliding
Tour of the Stars
Volcano Maui Air Tours

Next up we have HAWAI’I ISLAND
Currently scheduled to arrive Monday morning, June 1; depart Tuesday evening, June 2.

Dolphin Quest
Firenesia
Hawai‘i Pack and Paddle
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park
Hilo Pana‘ewa Rainforest Zoo and Gardens
K?lauea
Kona Coffee Tour
Lava Tube Cave Adventure: K?lauea Caverns of Fire
Native Guide Hawai‘i
Stargazing:
*Arnotts Lodge
*Bigti
*Hawai‘i Forest & Trail
*Mauna Kea Summit Adventures

Windward Coast and Waterfalls Tour

Next up we have the Island of O’AHU
Currently scheduled to arrive Tuesday evening, June 2; depart Weds/Thurs evening, June 3/4.

Battleship Missouri Memorial 10th Anniversary Celebration
Bike Hawai‘i
The Contemporary Museum
Dunebuggy Adventures
Ghost Tours of Old Honolulu
Hans Hedemann Surf School
Hawai‘i’s Plantation Village
Honolulu Soaring
North Shore
North Shore Surf Girls Surf School
O‘ahu Ghost Tours
Paddle Core Fitness
Waimea Valley Park
Wildside Specialty Tours

That is the four islands that we are visiting. I will have another post up about what I’ll be doing and when and where and how. I want to have you experience with me this social media trip! ALOHA!

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The other night I had a special and impromptu radio show talking about social media and what has become known as the  the Motrin video debacle.

During the discussion and roundtable of experts,  we talked about the idea that Johnson & Johnson, the parent company of Motrin, and more specifically, McNeil Consumer Healthcare the company that is heading up any campaigns, was not listening and did not respond to the situation in a quick manner.  That perhaps they had an opportunity to jump on this before it got to the heights it did and they could have done something more.  The response, and apology and the aftermath is a different post altogether.

In that discussion one of my guests, Jessica Gottlieb, mentioned that the company is big enough to have a team dedicated to listening to what is being said about them online.  I debated that this was not the reality of the situation. Even the largest of companies have no idea what is being said on a regular basis and they in fact have nothing in place to help them with this idea.  This also made me think of a scene from one of my favorite movies:

President: We didn’t see this thing coming?

 
Dan: Well, our object collision budget’s a million dollars. That allows us to track about 3% of the sky, and beg’n your pardon sir, but it’s a big-ass sky. ~ Armageddon (1998/I)

The line in the movie refers to the fact that a big asteroid the size of Texas was about to hit the earth.  The President of the United States wanted to know why we were surprised by this fact.

I thought about the Motrin incident with the Mommy Bloggers and the Internet in the same fashion.  Turns out the YouTube Video referred to was released to the website in September and didn’t really get known until a month later.  They were completely caught unaware.  The video went viral over a weekend, and I am sure that the folks that are in charge of the campaign were all home for their weekend off and had no idea what was coming.  The Internet doesn’t take weekends off. Monday morning, I can picture the CEO standing in a boardroom with the same conversation as above.  The department head responding the same way, “we are sorry but we don’t spend much time or money on this kind of thing.”

I recently attended,  as a representative of the IBNMA,  the Blogwell event put on by the Blog Council in San Jose a few weeks ago and I was introduced to this very idea by Debbie Curtis-Magley, at United Parcel Service.  Debbie is the whole department for their social media campaign as it relates to their online management or brand reputation management and quipped about having difficulty tracking the entire Internet, and knowing that their are quite a few people writing online about “sit-ups” and “chin-ups.”  She has her work cut out for her because like above, “it’s a big ass Internet”.

There are quite a few companies out their that do help companies with their online brand and reputation management and they have proprietary applications that they use to accomplish their task.  They specialize in making sure you are alerted to what is being said about you, your company, or about that crazy YouTube video you put up on your website that set off a wildfire response in the blogosphere.  They can also be there when something good happens.  Normally however, and most unfortunately, the good stuff does not get quite the play as the bad stuff.  What is being said about you and your company?  Are you listening?  It is after all a very big ass Internet.

I would challenge the people I mentioned above to leave a comment if you are monitoring the Internet.  Did you read this post or see it come across your screen?  Debbie, did you pick it up?  Jessica, can you leave a comment here in more than a day or two? How about my own folks at the IBNMA?

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Abby Johnson of WebProNews got a chance to catch up with me while we finished up our presentation about hiring professional bloggers while out at the Blog World and New Media Expo in the Executive and Entrepreneur Track. I moderated the panel of Darren Rowse of Problogger fame, Will Chen and Greg Go. It was a fun session and even I was able to learn a few things. Here is the video that Abby did following that session.

Jim Turner Video

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Buried under the weight of my inbox and trying to filter the spam from the real stuff I needed to get to today, I ran across a comment on Bloggers For Hire:

I was reading around some of the posts here and I found interesting things that you guys talk about, I just made a blog about quitting smoking resources and ideas that you might want to check out. If someone is interested in this topic just go to; [no I'm not going to give them the unearned link] and let me know what you think.
Thanks in advance.

On its face, this looks like perhaps a proper comment for a blog.  In fact, Andy Beard discussed this earlier about companies, using Bloggers For Hire as an example, that might be offering “paid comments” and whether those might be ethical.  I think that is worth a read if nothing more than to check out the comments that were left and the many opinions that surfaced.

Let’s take the above example and break it down.  The first sentence supposedly lets me know that the commenter has taken the time to read my blog and it’s entries.  It is decent copy that engages and compliments which might get through my bullsh*t detector, but of course I’m a paid professional and it promptly failed.

Next it indicates that he “made a blog”.  This sounds like something that my 2 year old did in his pull-up diaper.  It’s also a perfect example of what Stephanie says is a bad error.  In the statement he talks about smoking.  The comment just lost its relevance.  I have no idea why this person would be talking about smoking on a blog about hiring bloggers. 

Then comes the elevator marketing pitch.  Come to my site, tell me what you think and thank you in advance.  This is a waste of time and space because obviously we have already determined that your comment is nothing more than spam in a dress.  You can dress up the comment, but of course, it’s still just spam.

I am a big proponent of commenting on blogs if you are a company looking to get into the social aspects of blogs, podcasts and other social media tools.  If you are going to comment, please don’t clutter the inboxes of companies and other bloggers with this type of marketing plan.  Make your comment add something to the post and to the overall experience of other readers.  If you are taking time trying to lure readers with the above type of comment, you are wasting everyone’s time including your own.

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On the same vein as my lost post regarding a blogging hiccup or what I see as a new era of business blogging, we are now at a crossroad of corporate advertising, marketing and PR online.  There are many forward thinking companies that are early adopters, and especially in the technical world where technology is seen as a tool to harness if you want to succeed.  So where are we in the adoption of social media as it relates to the rest of the companies and corporations?  We are at a new beginning, the stage of educating the rest of the world. Those companies that didn’t get it, the ones that want to see what the early adopters did and what worked and what didn’t.

We have seen it in our own business model here at One By One Media and Bloggers For Hire.  We really didn’t have to sell real hard to get companies that were contacting us about business blogging and hiring bloggers.  They wanted to adopt the technology and they wanted to make it a part of their online presence.  They were already sold on the idea.  All I or any other social media consultant had to do was implement the tools necessary for the company to join in the social media world.  We had the good life then, and our sales were self fulfilling prophecies.  Now we are in the education stage of the rest of the world.  These companies and corporations are not yet sold on the idea of social media.  In fact, I think it was stated best in a post and thread at the newly canceled Blog Business Summit.

Steve Broback wrote:

Like the Lambada, I don?t believe my original, 1990?s era event model is nearly as viable as it used to be, and certainly not so for the BBS. The BBS really never attracted the huge numbers of marketing and PR types that clearly *needed* to learn this stuff. I tried very hard with the Chicago event to attract that demographic and our efforts washed up on shore like a dead fish.

In addition, we emailed, snail mailed, and telephoned 250 CTOs and CIOs and invited them to come and learn how Wikis and blogs can enable internal knowledge sharing. They were terrified, and only 3 signed up. A couple even said they were ?too busy? with their current efforts to reign in email overload to take the time to attend(!) (emphasis added)

This was a very astute thought and a comment by Kevin Hillstrom about the event:

In the posts of the past two days, one can see that you feel hurt by spending so much time and effort to evangelize something you believe in, only to have to make tough choices that may, on the surface, appear contrary to what you?ve evangelized over a period of several years.

It will probably be hard, but try to not blame people who ?don?t get it?. It is just as likely that people failed to do a good job of educating folks as it is that people ?don?t get it?. You?ll never know which of those two issues is the right one.

Teresa mentioned that companies that don?t get this are ?sunk?. They aren?t. They are simply missing an opportunity to improve the performance of their business.

When the conversation turns to picking on the ones who you are trying to evangelize, you make it that much harder to be successful in the long term.

Don?t feel bad about having to cancel something you so strongly believed in. Spend your efforts moving forward, showing folks that they can benefit by doing what you?re suggesting, and that what you?re suggesting is evolving and changing every day.

I sent two folks to your conference last year. One of those folks made a difference in her organization, armed with the knowledge she gained. Know that your efforts do help others who have an interest in your subject matter.

Kevin’s comment is spot on in my opinion.  We will need to show the examples of the past early adopters.  We need to take those examples and show the rest of the corporate world how the companies used the tool and how it benefited them and provide hard numbers for those companies to see for a return on their investment. As mentioned, Teresa stating that companies not adopting this social media tool are not sunk, but if companies want to differentiate themselves from their competitors, they can, if not, they are missing the opportunity.  I think we agree on the fact that if a company misses out on enough opportunities, sooner than later they will eventually sink  and die.  It will be up to them if they sink or swim, but it is up to us as social media consultants to throw them a life raft if needed.

So where do we go from here?  Now is truly the call for social media consultants to become evangelists. It’s time to stop preaching to the choir and truly find followers that want to succeed in business using social media tools.  Now is when we have the tough sell.  The easy sell is a thing of the past.  Pull in your numbers, get those examples ready, and show what you have done, and what you can do in the future.  It’s not going to be the easy contract that you get now, but one that you truly earn.

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It’s not often we get to toot our horn around here, but when we can, I like to play it loud and play it often.  I was reading through the comments section of the blog and noticed that Alex has given us a link to a Wall Street Journal article by Sarah Needleman entitled Blog It and They May Come. The article discusses small businesses and their blogging campaigns.  It was a nicely written article and it does point our some of the problems we see from small businesses, this blogging thing is work.

To my pleasant surprise, about half way through the article I saw a familiar name.  I was looking at a past client that used our services and is now being interviewed and quoted in the Wall Street Journal!

Making the Link

Ty’s Toy Box Inc., an online retailer based in Erlanger, Ky., has lured people to its blog about trends in the toy-licensing industry by having other blogs and Web sites link to it. The company arranged a link-exchange agreement in April with TheToyGuy.com, a Web site from toy-industry expert Chris Byrne that features news and product reviews.

“We coordinated it so that occasionally our blog and Chris’s blog are about the same issue, but from different perspectives,” says George Stolpe, vice president of business development and media relations for Ty’s Toy Box. The two blogs link to each other in each post, he says.

Ms. Melberg says the links help boost a company’s search-engines ranking because blogs recommended by external sources rank higher than ones without link referrals.

According to Mr. Stolpe, Ty’s Toy Box pays a free-lance writer to maintain its blog and says the total cost for it is “a very minimal amount.” He says while he can’t quantify the blog’s role in the near-triple-digit average growth in sales every year since its start, he has no doubt it has played an important part.

After seeing that I was proud of Ty Simpson and George Stolpe for sticking it out and seeing the power of blogging.  They paid one of our bloggers for a while and decided on a different path but finally stuck to it in the long run and now they are a feature in the Wall Street Journal.  I’m not saying all of our client’s will be this much of a success, but if I have anything to do with it you can bet I’ll try!

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One By One Media is once again a proud sponsor of the Blog Business Summit in Chicago, September 17-19, 2007.  We were a sponsor last year in Seattle and it proved to be some of the best marketing money I have ever spent.  Money is tight in every small company, but if you plan to attend any social media type conference this year, this one is the one you should choose to attend.  If you are a large company, you better attend so as to compete with the smaller businesses wanting a piece of your social media pie.

This conference is the premiere event for all things business blogging.  Each time I have attended I have learned new things about business blogging, have met new friends, and have made important contacts that were important to my business.  The parties are fun, the hallway discussions are invaluable and they usually have some great food and provide excellent facilities.  This year is their first year in the middle of the country and not on the West coast so I know it will open up some opportunities for the east coasters and southern attendees to get a taste of the fun. 

If you want to attend, and would like to get a discount, of course who wouldn’t want a discount, then all you need to do is enter in a simple code when signing up for the event.  One By One Media has been given a special discount code you can use.  When registering just use P65CHI and you get an immediate savings of $100.00.  Can’t beat it!  If you decide to use this code to sign up for the conference, I will personally give you a free gift!  In order to find out how cool that gift is, you need to sign up and use the code!

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Tris Hussey has had a busy week with The Mediasphere Radio Show on Tuesday with me, Dave Taylor and Rick Calvert, the taping of the television show with Leo Laporte on Wednesday and now driving to Seattle to be at the Gnomedex Conference 2007. 

Tris will be live blogging the event from the trenches and I think he has some cool stuff in store.  What I am not sure of is where that live blogging will be taking place.  It seems that companies love to have Tris live blog events for them, and he posts on the company’s own website or blog.  When I send him to a conference to live blog, he posts on his own personal blog.  I think I messed up somewhere or we need to have a priorities alignment! I’m still confused.  No matter where you get to read all of the cool action and presenters and sessions, pay attention, Tris does a great job of making you feel like you are sitting right next to him and listening in on all the fun.  This is the first Gnomedex with Twitter being available, and I think there will also be a bunch of people live streaming and podcasting from the conference as well.  I hope I can keep up with all the action.

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Some of the A-List has been talking about social media overload, and I for one have to join in the same complaint.  As part of what we offer as social media consultants, we provide information about the latest and greatest technology available for a company to use in their marketing, advertising and PR campaigns.  I have been wanting to write this post for quite some time, but it wasn’t until a post by Digital Alex entitled “My Friends Hate Pownce”, that I realized he was channeling my frustration.

Like Alex, I grow tired of the same but different applications, like Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce.  The next company that thinks they have the next big thing in this type of application, please ask yourself will anyone say to you that this application we are making is going to be compared to any of the three above, scrap the project.  If you are changing the colors and making the same application better, chances are it won’t be adopted unless it really knocks the socks off users.  I have all three, but because Twitter was first, I have the largest number of users there.  Why?  because I started building my network there first.  If I have to rebuild my network of friends for each application, it causes me to reinvent my social media wheel.

I like Alex’s solutions to the problem.  I think Facebook is coming close to what Alex describes as a social aggregator, but it still has a way to go before it completes what he intends in his mind.  My reinvention of the social media wheel also follows what he tells us is his solution to the networking.  Migrate all of my friends for me from one application to another.

At this point there is really no need for a money back guarantee, as all of these applications are free, unless of course you have a pro account with Pownce, but I would be willing to pay for a service if it was the be all and end all application that did it all.

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It’s not often we get to toot our own horn here so whenever possible I like to be the first to give us a shout.  In this particular instance, Tris and I have been so busy with work, we forgot about the cool news!

A couple of months back, Tris was interviewed by Michael Fitzgerald of Inc. Magazine.  That interview finally made its way into print (page 51) in the magazine, and on their online version as well.  I then remembered that I too had an appearance in the magazine a while back in the October 2005 issue,  but I was only in the letter to the editor type section when talking about blogging.  This is way cooler!  They have a great opening paragraph for some good publicity for Tris and for our firm:

Tris Hussey couldn’t wait to get his hands on Vista when the new Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) operating system launched at the end of January. Hussey, a self-described geek and the chief technology partner at the blogging agency One By One Media, had to have it.

The article goes on and Tris gives some sage advice to those not already in a Vista system:

Hussey, for his part, had some regrets that he hurried out to get Vista, but he’s happy with it now. He says it downloads software faster. He likes the new interface and a search tool that can find text in e-mail messages as well as documents. Still, he advises entrepreneurs to wait until later this year, when Microsoft releases Service Pack 1 for Vista, a significant patch designed to fix vulnerabilities and bugs most people don’t even know about.

Thanks for all the hard work and being recognized as an expert in the technology field Tris.  We can always use a gold star such as this!

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