Spark Minute

Will Gmail’s “Priority Inbox” decimate email marketing?

David Spark — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:55:05 +0000

When Google announces new news, you can’t avoid it. There’s nothing you can do about it. When they’ve got a new product it’s always the lead story. Well, no exception with the announcement of Gmail’s “Priority Inbox” which is supposed to handle the much complained about problem of email/information overload.

Related: Why did Google get into the realtime search game? Register for a free copy of the report “Real-Time Search and Discovery of the Social Web” (20-page PDF). Read a summary of the report.

On the onset the product sounds fantastic. Just give me the good stuff first and you can put all my other email in a secondary pile. But wasn’t that what the spam folder was? It was a mixture of true spam, and also every now and then a valid email would get tossed in there. The problem is you’d check your spam folder at most once every couple of weeks. And “giving a glance” is the most attention you would give to it.

The new spam folder

How soon will it take before this secondary folder is treated with the same respect as your spam folder? As more and more information comes in more stuff will be relegated to the secondary folder never to be looked at again. We already do this today. How many of you have an “I’ll look at it later” folder? And how often have you looked at that folder? Should be called an “I’ll look at it never” folder.

Are your gears turning already? Have you seen the obvious? This could put an end to email marketing. All email marketing will fall into this “I’ll look at it later” folder which will soon be viewed as a secondary spam filter. And could Google start prioritizing some email themselves? Maybe messages sent by Google Apps customers? They say that they don’t descriminate, but why is it I see YouTube videos with thumbnails before I see any other videos on Google Search results?

If I was an email marketing firm I’d be watching Google with an extremely close eye.

What does it cost you to bring people to your site?

David Spark — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:16:24 +0000

For years, the primary measure of success was the number of “hits” one got to their website. That definition was often incorrectly used to describe pageviews, or so people thought. In actuality, a site “hit” refers to a server call and every element called up on a web page denotes a “hit.” So if you had ten images on a page and a user called up that page, it would register as eleven “hits” (ten server calls for the ten photos and one server call for the HTML page). As you might expect, “hits” became grossly inflated numbers to describe pageviews.

Today, most users have smartened up about “hits” and they use far more accurate statistics such as users and actual pageviews. But we’re also concerned with social media statistics such as Twitter followers, Facebook fans, and YouTube subscribers.

But for most online businesses, revenue comes from drawing people to your site. Either you make money directly from your website, or people see your site and contact you to hire you.

If that’s the case with your business, the goal is to get your audience to your website. The question is how much is it costing you in time and money to bring people to your website?

The costs to bring people to your site

Here are some different ways companies spend money and time to bring people to their site.

Search engine marketing – This has been the de facto solution for driving traffic to your site. Google’s AdWords has been a very measurable, trackable, and tweakable means to get people to your site. Problem is its costly and the money you spend is not cumulative. The money spent in August doesn’t transfer to September. August’s content (ads) are gone. You have to continually keep spending money to bring people to your site.

Podcast – This is a great means to build an audience, and to have your brand consistently on a person’s iPhone or iPod. Podcasts though only speak to a limited audience and it can often take two years of hard work to build an audience. Minimal financial cost to set up, but ongoing production is costly on your time.

Blog – Timely content on blogs are often more visible in search that static content on your business site. If updated regularly, a blog will consistently get more traffic than your business site, yet will extend the visibility of your brand and drive traffic to your business site. Blogs have a similar cost structure as podcasts. There’s a minimal financial cost to set up, but ongoing production is costly on your time. Both blogs and podcasts are cumulative in nature. Money and time spent in one month transfers to the next month, because the content doesn’t vanish. This is unlike advertising which is not cumulative.

Advertising – Purchase offline media and online media (e.g., banner ads) to drag people to your site. Spend as little or as much as you want. Again, the money you spend is not cumulative. You have to keep spending to maintain traffic to your site.

Social media – Using audience gathering social tools such as Twitter and Facebook, maintain an ongoing relationship with your audience. Time, effort, and money spent is also cumulative. To ultimately bring traffic to your business site you need to generate offers and interesting content to entice visits.

Resident desktop application – Another option is an application that stays resident on the individual’s desktop and drives traffic to the business site. The benefit is after you extend the energy and cost to get the individual to download and install the application, the cost to get that person to your site requires no advertising, blog, podcast, social media, or search engine marketing dollars.

The downloadable content-based application concept was abandoned a while ago because there was a sentiment in the industry that you simply can’t get people to download and install an application. This is far from true as there are many successful downloadable applications (read “Can downloadable applications survive?”). Another reason businesses have shied away from this solution is the history of TSR (terminate and stay resident) applications has a very checkered past. But today, what were once called TSRs, are now just referred to as apps that can be found on your mobile phone or iPad. This app concept can now make a return to the desktop, but it’s important to deliver a desktop experience that people want to have consistently on their computer.

One possible solution is from a client of Spark Media Solutions, itiBiti, which is a white-labeled desktop content and communications application. Companies such as NBC and McDonald’s Canada distribute their own branded versions of the product. What the consumer gets is a first look at content and offers before they hit the web (see “How to increase the value of your content without changing the content”) plus a communications application that lets them make free phone calls. The advantage to NBC and McDonald’s is once they get someone to download and install the application, they’ve got a portion of the consumer’s personal real estate, the desktop. Plus, and more importantly, they reach their audience before they go to the web.

I know I’ve left a few items out, so I’d like to hear from you as to how you spend your money and time to drive traffic to your site.

cc photo credit to Daniel Borman.

Early warning signs your company’s media network will fail

David Spark — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 14:45:15 +0000

The most common failure for companies building and communicating a content network is to not put in the effort, or simply ignore one of the three development stages: production, distribution, or conversation. Here are some classic tell-tale warning signs (that I’ve actually heard from clients) said at development stage that often don’t get the attention they deserve:

This is an excerpt from a longer piece entitled “Be the Voice^SM” – Build Your Business by Becoming your Industry’s Thought Leader:
Read online, or register to download the free PDF.

“We want to create a podcast” Good initial effort, but singularly focused. Not thinking about creating a content network, but rather a content unit. Nine times out of ten the phrase, “We want to create a podcast” means we want to create one, maybe two audio interviews. A podcast is defined as a series and its purpose is to build an audience over time. Go beyond single audio program-type thinking by understanding the core of what you’re trying to accomplish over the long term.

“We want a whitepaper” Probably the most uninteresting, uninventive, and most expensive single form of content. Seeing the word “whitepaper” usually results in a giant “ho hum.” It is often the first content form that’s requested, and I often oblige, but it is costly.

“Everyone tells us we need to make a video” Those people who say you need a video haven’t seen your product and don’t realize it’s not visual. In general what they say is true though. Most people would rather watch a three minute video than read a three page article. But, not everything is visual, especially in technology. And the purpose of video is to tell a story with pictures. For example, one colleague sent three silly videos he made for a wireless technology product. I patiently sat through all three videos and still wasn’t sure what the product actually did. Instead, I went to the company’s Web site and after reading the first two sentences, which took me ten seconds, I knew what the product did. Think what medium can tell your story the best and in the quickest way. It may or may not be video.

“I don’t have time to write a blog” This is extremely common and if anyone does say this, DO NOT force them to write the blog. Blog writing is based on passion and if it’s dictated or micromanaged it will fail. Best to let the people who want to write, write. It’s possible the person who initially said they didn’t have time to write will see the success of the blog and will find time to write. For more advice on this, read the article “Blogging advice for people who ‘have no time to blog.’”

“I want to create something viral” Thankfully, I’m not hearing this phrase as much today as I use to hear it. But it’s about the equivalent of hearing fingernails against a chalkboard. A person who says this is looking for a single shot to get something for nothing with an audience you have no control over. They’re not committed on an ongoing basis to create content or engage in conversation.

“I want to increase word of mouth about our products and services” This person is skipping the need to create editorial content and wants to move directly into conversation. Problem is people need something to talk about. You can’t force word of mouth. You have to create an environment for it to happen. That means you create a forum for discussion and a catalyst, often content, that drives people to interact and respond.

This is an updated post from February, 2008.

CC photo credit to Hans Gerwitz.

The cool and not-so-cool from Gnomedex

David Spark — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 19:36:27 +0000

I just got back from a geek conclave in Seattle, Washington called Gnomedex where I was shooting videos and reporting for Dice and Dice News. If you’re not familiar with Dice, it’s the career hub for anything that’s tech.

On its tenth year, Gnomedex has been at the forefront at spotting industry trends. As an example, Chris Pirillo, the event’s founder and producer showed a slide from the first Gnomedex where Robert Scoble said that we should all start paying attention to Google and Weblogs because they were going to take over the web.

It is because of moments like this that many refer to Gnomedex as “TED light.” The conference is considerably smaller, costs a fraction of the price, but still has really interesting speakers. There’s no set agenda beforehand, yet Pirillo books Gnomedex to follow a theme. This year’s theme was about the power of the individual to do and affect change. There is no need for someone to tell you that you can or can’t do something. Technology has enabled the power to create. Here’s Chris Pirillo explaining this year’s theme for Gnomedex.

And now my rundown of the cool and not-so-cool items from this year’s Gnomedex.

Not-so-cool – Gnomedex 10 is the last Gnomedex – Like Cher’s final performance, for many years Chris Pirillo has threatened that this year will be the last Gnomedex. But this year he feels pretty emphatic that it will be the last one unless he gets a major media sponsor. It’s simply just too much work. He announced it in his opening presentation and when he closed the event.

Cool – Star Tags to rate content within a Tweet – Not Chris Pirillo’s idea, but he suggested the use of two character Star Tags to rate what you say in a Twitter post. Simply rate what you’re talking about on a scale from *0 to *9. The point is to not rate the tweet, but rate what you’re tweeting about (e.g., “Get the veal at that restaurant *8″). By just adding two extra characters you provide additional analysis about your tweet.

Not-so-cool – Presentation notes on an iPhone – Many of the presenters had their presentation notes on their iPhone and it was unbelievably distracting. As they were up there presenting, they kept constantly looking down to their phone. It looked like they were checking their messages during their speech.

Cool – Creative solutions to avoid censorship – Austin Heap, founder of the Censorship Research Center, creator of the obfuscation software Haystack, and digital distributor of the HBO film “For Neda” told two great tales about evading international censorship. In both cases his success required the use of technology, Twitter, creativity, community, and critical individual support. Heap was emphatic about the human support he received. Connections of connections opened up doors for him that he simply couldn’t have accomplished on his own. With all that personal help, he was able to achieve his goals of legally exporting the Haystack program to Iran and getting the “For Neda” film made and distributed over the Internet for free. Here’s my interview with Austin talking about those key critical people.

Cool - Prezi – Dynamic presentation tool that lets you tell an animated story with still pictures and text. It has the same type of gravity-like movement that you see on the iPhone. A couple of the presenters used it.

Not-so-cool – Prezi in the future - Like everything, Prezi will soon be overused, will no longer appear unique, and no longer be a cool presentation tool. There was a time we thought PowerPoint was cool. Prezi could be a victim of their own success.

Conference goer? Then check out the article “How to get recognized at your next conference.” Read online or register to download the PDF.

Cool – Applause for really geek stuff – There were many comments made throughout the weekend that really hit on everybody’s geek funny bone. Here are a few of those moments:

Remembering a very first contact: “I sent an email on Prodigy.”
Funniest t-shirt at Gnomedex: “I’m the mayor of YourMom on Foursquare.”
The two female founders of Tech Mavens, a site that promotes women in tech, had to remind the attendees that “Tech Mavens is not a dating site.”
Scott and Alex Mueller, a couple that chose to move to a remote area of Washington to build a house and live a sustainable life, had a few problems and first moments: “We can’t make calls with our iPhone out in the woods, but that’s not the iPhone’s strong suit anyway.” AND “Before we had flush toilets we had Internet access.”

Cool – Additional unconference speed round – Chris Pirillo asked people to post ideas (without names) on white sheets as to what they’d like to talk about at the end of the first day of the conference. I did really like the fact that the best ideas won, and not the people connected to the idea. Also, this format for an extra “speed round” unconference worked very well. When you try to turn an entire event into an unconference it falls flat on its face.

Not-so-cool – Providing far too much detail on how you started your business/non-profit – Presenters for Tech Mavens spent too much time pouring over the minutia of how they started their organization. Conversely, they spent little to no time discussing what their organization actually did. I like to hear how people started their business, but the step-by-step minute detail was agonizing. I believe the presenters were just filling up time because they admitted multiple times in the presentation that they hadn’t fully baked the goals and objectives of the organization. In the end, no one, not even the presenters knew what their organization did or was going to do.

Not-so-cool – Yet another “girl power” presentation – We’ve been programmed to applaud these types of presentations no matter how redundant they are. And Tech Mavens gave us yet another one. Yes, there are not enough women in tech. Yes, women need more mentors in tech. Yes, women aren’t as boastful as men in tech. We’ve all heard this time and time again. In fact, in Tech Mavens’ video presentation one woman admitted that she’s attended an endless number of “We need more women in tech” presentations. And this video was produced and presented by yet another “We need more women in tech” organization.

Cool - Finding opportunities in macro trends – Larry Wu is a consumer products developer and current creator of X-Press by SmartCup (Individual disposable press coffees). He gave a great presentation about how to find opportunities by identifying and producing consumer products that satisfy macro trends. I don’t know what the macro trends are, but Wu did an excellent job identifying a bunch of them happening right now. Here are his descriptions:

Artisan – Handcrafted, one-of-a-kind objects, services, and activities that express personal style. Putting your heart into the project for the project and not for the money.
Cultural Fusion – Examples include Manga comics and Bollywood. Proactive interest in experiencing multiple cultures and new cultural hybrids grounded in popular and consumer culture. Another good example is when people go overseas and they start craving the food of that culture. The international impact of the Internet allows for cultural fusion to happen as well.
Fingerprinting – Search for and articulation of one’s unique identity; Fingerprinting is expressed through an individual’s collection of unique passion points. Personalization. It’s why Starbucks works.
Health Monitor – The softer side of wellness is elbowed aside as people turn to science and medicine to answer health issues, from life-threatening to life-enhancing. Every time you see the label “lite,” “low-cal,” “anti-oxidant,” or “low fiber” it’s an example of this. The label itself gets consumers thinking about self treatment.
Hyperlife – Life is a multitasking, multisensory barrage. If you’re doing one thing at a time you’re probably bored.
Memory Marketing – Using history as an active resource to take a nostalgic trip through time, recycling the stuff of our collective past. Perfect examples of this is the new Mustang car or the endless number of movies that play off of crappy TV shows (e.g., “Charlie’s Angels,” “The A-Team”).
Merit Badges – The shift in values to collect experiences rather than things; the recasting of social status from what one has to what one does.
Ready, Set, Go! – Innovation plus convenience: the seamless combination is the ultimate answer to soothing the roaring demands of the stressed-out.

Wu said the first step is to identify the macro trends and then create products that satisfies people’s needs and desires using a combination of macro trend behaviors. Combining multiple macro trends will increase your chance for success. People don’t need to be doing a behavior beforehand for you to actually start to drive consumer behavior.

Bored with dull conference panel sessions? Read “More Schmooze, Less Snooze: How to Deliver ‘The Most Talked About’ Conference Session.” Read the summary or register to download the PDF.

Not-so-cool – Overuse of the word “revolution” in your presentation – At the beginning of Melissa Pierce’s presentation, she used the word “revolution” to describe every single item she was showing. Everything. It got monotonous very quickly, but she wouldn’t let up. She just kept on saying everything was a “revolution.” Let me suggest two options for improvement. Either pick up a thesaurus or dump the whole beginning of your presentation, because when Pierce finally got around to talking about her film, “Life in Perpetual Beta,” and how she made it, then it became “cool.”

Cool – Crowd sourcing a film project – Two presentations were about the creation of a movie through community support. The first, “Life in Perpetual Beta” was made by Melissa Pierce and it’s a documentary about how technology has affected us personally to socialize and create. She completely financed the creation and her travel through call outs to Twitter and donations via her website. She asked people to send $30 and in return she would send the person a t-shirt and put their name in her film.

The second film, Browncoats: Redemption is a crowd sourced fan film. Steve Fisher and Mike Dougherty are fans of the sci-fi TV series “Firefly” and its subsequent film “Serenity.” They were such fans that they decided to produce a fan film. All it took was a lot of hard work. There were no tricks to it, just a lot of call outs to the community and two years of dedication. In the end, 160 people volunteered on the project. They raised money through donations, and in the end it only cost them $27,000. The film will be available in just a couple of weeks and they’re only asking for a $20 donation. In return they’ll send you a DVD of their film.

Here’s the trailer for the movie.

Here’s my interview with the two producers.

Cool - Crowd-sourced computer art – Scott Draves, a software artist that created the Flame algorithm and the Electric Sheep screensaver, talked about how he initiated both of these artistic projects. The screensaver is generated by a hive of connected computers. Everyone who is watching and using the screensaver can influence what everyone else sees. Thousands of computers working together and sharing the results can create something interesting. Shared computer power and shared brain power. Draves likes to think of his “Electric Sheep” as crowd-sourced genetic designers. Draves always gives the “Electric Sheep” credit on the development of the art.

Not-so-cool – Long diatribes in which the goal is to get applause at the end of it – After doing standup comedy for years I’ve seen this technique done again and again and it always gets applause. Here’s how you do it: Talk passionately. Talk really fast. Don’t pause. Don’t take a breath. Don’t give the audience a moment to respond by laughing or applauding. When you’re done, you will conclude with a definite end and long pause and the audience will reflexively applaud. I’ve never seen it fail. Even if you’re not funny or clever, audiences have been trained to respond to talking really fast and then returning to normal meter by applauding. If you said the same exact words with deliberate pause and meter, people may laugh or respond along the way, but they will not bust out in applause at the end because you haven’t signaled “This is the end of my diatribe.” This technique is manipulative and it annoys me to no end. It’s used by hack comedians and Violet Blue, host of Open Source Sex, pulled this technique in her presentation.

Now to defend Violet Blue. First, she had a very popular presentation even if there was a kind of forced standing ovation at the end (a couple of people stood up and then Chris Pirillo said, “Everybody get up.”) I talked with her about the long diatribe technique at the closing party. She claimed that she wasn’t aware that she was doing some “technique” and when she does this for her class at SFSU she never gets applause (debunking my “It always works” theory), but then again she admits no one ever applauds in a classroom environment. She only used the technique once though. It doesn’t speak to her entire presentation and her. I had a great interview with her earlier. It’s just that the manipulative nature of the technique really annoys me. She’s smart. She knew what she was doing, even if she didn’t identify it as a specific “technique.”

Cool – Social Wargaming – Tim Hwang, producer of ROFLcon, a conference for unexpected Internet celebrities, talked about a social engineering game using social media. Better known as social wargaming, it’s a game to get people to participate in completing an action without actually knowing they’re part of a game. For example, can you get a piece of content to spread around? Can you identify the agents? Can you identify intentional rather than false social behavior? Most commonly, social wargaming is done over Twitter with real users. While all of this may seem insidious, and it is, it becomes a testing lab, with real subjects, to see what makes you trustworthy online. Can you learn techniques about user behavior and reaction and then program that cause and effect behavior into bots? Not only can you create bots to influence communities, you can also create bots to defend communities. I guess this kind of learning how to manipulate online crowds was more interesting to me than watching someone pull an old real world crowd manipulation technique.

Cool – Tricks to drive viral traffic – The closing presentation was given by Matt Inman, creator of the humor site, The Oatmeal. Inman gave one of the most popular presentations because he truly went through all the tricks and techniques he uses to rank high in search and to linkbait his audience. His advice focuses around finding a word or theme that’s a common gripe, or people can relate to, create digestible content, and if you can, talk about memes and current events.

The one thing missing though is not all of us are as funny as Inman. He wrote some really funny how to articles, top ten lists, and quizzes. Some examples include:

Photo credits: (cc) Kenneth Yeung – www.snapfoc.us, Betsy Weber, Randy Stewart

Gnomedex’s Chris Pirillo on Our Individual Power to Create

David Spark — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:33:31 +0000

Gnomedex 10 launched last Friday in Seattle. For those not familiar with the conference, attendees refer to it as “TED light,” because it’s a fraction of the cost, yet still has great inspiring speakers. While this popular tech conference has no pre-planned agenda, by the time Chris Pirillo, the founder, books the events with speakers, a theme emerges.

While at the conference I talked to Pirillo about this year’s theme, which Pirillo said is “the power of the individual.” We each have the power to do and to create without anybody asking. You just have to do it and technology has become the enabler. Most of the Gnomedex presenters have such a story to tell. They created something without anybody’s approval, and gathered interest as a result of it.

This interview is part of a series of videos I produced at Gnomedex 10 in Seattle this weekend as I was reporting for Dice and Dice News. They’ve got a fun contest to win an iPad on their Facebook page. Just explain what makes you a true geek and you’re entered to win (August 31st is the deadline). Plus, check out Robert Scoble’s tips for getting started in social media and Adria Richards’ tips for using social media and events to get your dream job.

How to make sure journalists get your story correct

David Spark — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 19:02:31 +0000

I’ve worked as a journalist for more than 15 years and one of my greatest fears, for which I’ve realized, is simply getting information wrong. I try really hard not to make those mistakes, but with so many moving parts it’s often inevitable that mistakes will happen.

Sometimes journalists are not on the top of their game. And sometimes they’re just no good.

Whatever the situation is with a journalist that’s interviewing you, there is a way to make your experience go well.

What follows are some techniques to making sure your story gets recorded correctly, and with the tone you expect. I can’t guarantee that the journalist will write the story in the manner you want, but these tips will definitely reduce the number of errors, so you won’t have one of those, “Uggh, that’s not what I said. It’s all wrong!” experiences.

If they don’t record the interview, ask to see the quotes

Sadly, there are many journalists that I respect that simply do not record their interviews. It drives me crazy. Recording interviews via audio or video is a necessary evil that every journalist must do. I know it’s no fun to have to go back and listen to quotes, but it truly is the only way to get quotes accurately. Unless you’re from the Slow Talkers of America, almost no one can type as fast as you can talk. And no journalist I know can write shorthand.

When you agree to an interview, ask the journalist if they’ll be recording the interview. If they’re not and they plan on quoting you, request that you see the quotes before they go in print. If they refuse, ask them why. One excuse may be that they need to write the piece right away and they don’t have time to get your review. Ask them when they will need you to review the quotes and simply let them know that you’ll be available and you’ll turn around a response in the time they need. If they want they can call and read the quote back to you over the phone for confirmation. Another option is they can read back the quote to you at the moment they write it down.

Or you can just ask them to record the interview.

Don’t ask to review the piece before they publish it

While it is completely cool to ask to see quotes before they’re published, especially if the journalist isn’t recording the interview, it is not cool to ask to review the entire article. It is truly the most insulting thing you can ask a journalist. I’ve had PR reps ask me this before and I immediately think, “Are you serious? I’m a journalist, not your friggin’ media relations monkey.” And worse, if you built up any goodwill during the interview and then make that request, your built up goodwill has now been completely shot.

Ask them to repeat back the information you just told them

I’m often writing about technology and interviewing people about very complicated technology processes. To make sure I understand what they’re saying, I’ll often pause the conversation and say, “Let me repeat what you just said back to you, to make sure I fully understand it.” I’ve used this technique many times because it makes me more comfortable in an interview, and usually the interviewee will clarify a small element in my explanation. The other benefit is it allows me to continue active listening instead of worrying if I fully understood what was said earlier.

Not all journalists do this. But you as an interviewee subject can ask them to regurgitate what you said, especially if you’re explaining something very complicated.

WARNING: Be careful how you approach this subject. Depending on how and when you make the request you can come off like a schoolteacher demanding, “Were you paying attention?” Instead, just before you begin the more technical portion say, “I’m going to explain a very complicated process. Just to make sure you completely understand it, do you mind repeating it back to me when we’re finished? I just want to make sure you fully understand it.” Just be extremely careful not to sound condescending. Your sole goal is correct transformation of information.

Real-time content will be the next best resource for journalists. Read how in the 20-page report, “Real-Time Search and Discovery of the Social Web.” Read a summary online or just register to download the full report.

Provide follow up information

Whether you’re a PR rep or an interview subject, when a journalist asks for follow up information, give it to them before they have to ask for it again via email. This is really important because if you do follow up with what they wanted it can tip the balance of slanting something in a story. It’s a slight gesture, but good proactive communications will improve results on the accuracy of information and tone of the story.

Write your own blog and point them to it

Anyone who is constantly being interviewed should definitely have a blog. It can be a great resource for the interviewer and fantastic follow up traffic for you because they’ll link to your blog posts as a follow up resource.

If you find yourself answering the same question again and again, do yourself and everyone else a favor and just write a blog post about it. That way when someone asks you the question again, you can just give them the headlines and then point them to the article. With all the information written out and visible, not rerecorded audibly by someone else, it reduces the chance that there will be an error in reporting your information.

Last year I had a great interview with Paul Levy, CEO of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a hospital where my father worked as a doctor for more than 40 years. Levy has made quite a name for himself with his blog, “Running a Hospital.” It’s a blog he writes himself, publishing one or two posts a day.

When I asked Levy about balancing his CEO duties with blogging, he didn’t think there should be a distinction between the two. “If one of your jobs as CEO of an organization is to represent that organization before the public. With traditional venues being newspapers, speeches, lectures, and the like. Then use of social media is a logical extension of that corporate responsibility of the CEO. The outreach potential is excellent plus you can express your point of view not being filtered by reporters, or editors, or whatever,” Levy said. Levy went on to explain that when he’s interviewed by a journalist he never knows what the story will look like when it’s published. With his own blog, he knows exactly what it will look like.

For more tips on blogging when you’re way to busy, read “Blogging advice for people who ‘have no time to blog.’”

Does the journalist have an agenda?

I once ran into this problem when I was being interviewed by a local reporter for a CBS affiliate in San Francisco. It was a piece about Facebook announcing that they were going to be releasing user content to web crawlers so it would be indexable and thus searchable via search engines like Google. Facebook was letting the public know that our profiles would soon be searchable through traditional search engines, thus giving us a chance to change our privacy settings before it actually happened. I was trying to impress upon the reporter that this was a good thing for Facebook to do because competitors MySpace and LinkedIn did the same thing, but never offered up a public alert before it happened, giving us a chance to opt-out by changing our privacy settings.

Little did I know that the reporter had an agenda. Well, she works for local news and they need to scare the crap out of their viewers. You can read the full story about what happened here and actually see the video of the segment. When the piece was produced, I come off looking like a hacker and a stalker that broke into the account of one of the young female college interns that work at the station.

To prevent this from happening to you, first you need to know if the person is reputable or a blogger with a storied past. You can discover that quickly by reading his/her past posts and seeing the editorial bent of their writing. After that, do a little pre-interviewing of the interviewer. In a very friendly, not accusatory, manner ask, “So what’s your take on the story so far?” and “Who have you spoken with so far? Who do you plan on speaking with?”

This information will give you a lot of insight to the planned tone of the piece if that’s already been predetermined.

Sat through one too many boring panel session? Read “More Schmooze, Less Snooze: How to Deliver ‘The Most Talked About’ Conference Session.” Read the summary or just register to download the PDF.

What if a mistake is made?

There’s a very high likelihood that you won’t agree with everything that’s in the final piece. Depending on the type of mistake, there are a series of actions you can take:

Eggregious error – The error is bad and makes the journalist look stupid if anyone finds out. Don’t leave a comment. Simply send an email explaining the mistake but try not to make it sound like it was the stupidest mistake the journalist could have made.
Simple factual error – If it’s a small error, like the spelling of someone’s name, just send a quick email and let them know about the mistake and offer up a compliment about the piece as a whole.
Didn’t get the full story – If you’d like to add more color to the story than the journalist provided, leave a comment on the article and point to follow up information.
Don’t agree with the theme – If the journalist simply took an opposite side of what you were trying to explain, first send a private email asking why your theme wasn’t represented in the piece. If they are adamant about their opinion and said they simply don’t agree, feel free to leave a comment in the piece with a link to follow up information on your site. Your follow up piece on your site should specifically cite the article and point back to the original article. If your opinion isn’t appropriately expressed within an article, the next best thing is to get your opinion alongside (within comments) and linked to (your own blog post) the article.

You can always point out mistakes, but never ask a journalist to change the article. They can do the math themselves. If they feel the article warrants a change then they’ll change it. You asking them to change the piece will often have the reverse effect. They’ll be so annoyed they’ll start to act defiant as they have no allegiance to you, only their publication. I’ve had PR reps ask me to change something in an article and I get so offended that I go out of my way to keep the article as it is.

For more, check out this article How PR Professionals Can Participate in New Media. It’s over three years old, but the theories in the piece still hold true to today.

Suggestions of your own?

These are my suggestions from my own experience, but I’m eager to know if any of you have recommendations of your own. Let me know.

Creative Commons photo credits to smiling_da_vinci, sskennel, chriswild, speedye, and thivierr

On KQED talking Google, Verizon and Net Neutrality

David Spark — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 19:28:51 +0000

On Friday night I appeared on KQED’s “This Week in Northern California” discussing the open letter Google and Verizon cowrote to the FCC proposing new broadband requirements for mobile and some type of second Internet. The letter bent everyone out of shape and caused a flurry of response from traditional journalists and bloggers. While the protest at Google on Friday was a dud, anger in the blogosphere remained very high, with most everyone trying to extrapolate what Google and Verizon meant with their rather vague proposal. Google and Verizon responded to these various theories trying to clear up some myths that had developed over the week. But in the end it appeared the two elements that most upset everyone, mobile and this “second Internet” being exempt from the FCC’s net neutrality regulation, were still very much on the table according to the two powerhouses.

If you haven’t been paying attention, or need an overview, watch my five minute segment from the KQED show with Belva Davis.

Did HP’s Mark Hurd sexually harass an iPhone user?

David Spark — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 17:33:42 +0000

Who knows? The mystery around Mark Hurd’s leaving of HP and the absurd study by OKCupid about iPhone users having more sex than Android phone users became the fodder for this week’s episode of John C. Dvorak’s Cranky Geeks. Watch this week’s episode with John Markoff of the NYTimes and Joseph Engo of Mevio.

Interview: Steps to getting started with your media presence

David Spark — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 23:48:52 +0000

A few weeks ago I was interviewed by Conrad Hall, host of a podcast and radio show called “Social Media: Cheap and Easy.”

The interview turned out to be a really good summary of how to get started in social media by walking the listener through four steps:

Assess and Listen – This is where you learn about where your market is. Ask established people where the social networks of your business and locale are. You should also do an internal assessment of the wisdom you have internally and externally.
Editorial – Define how you want to be viewed in the public eye. Essentially transfer that branding you have offline and bring it to online, but have an editorial mandate. Often that mandate can be made up of the most popular questions you answer on a daily basis.
Production – This is the greatest cost center. If you don’t produce wisely, you can waste a ton of money. I offer some tips to streamline the production process and do it for a fraction of traditional cost.
Distribution - This is the social part of social media.

Listen below or download the MP3 (Time: 26:30) .

Digging deep into company knowledge to improve productivity

David Spark — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 02:33:05 +0000

(Here’s an article I wrote last week at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, California. For more coverage, check out the Techonomy blog.)

So often when I attend conferences there’s this driving desire to define the subject of the talk before we begin discussing. Objectively, it’s a good idea, but it rarely allows you to launch your session with a bang. Regardless, here goes:

Productivity = Output / Input

In the long run productivity drives the wealth of nations and the competitiveness of companies. Being productive still matters.

Productivity’s hurdle

“If HP knew what HP already knows,” said HP’s Lew Platt of his company’s inability to know at a high level what all the employees know at a ground level. One possible solution for this type of company myopia is to “narrate your work,” suggests Dave Winer. It sounds egotistical and narcissistic, but providing that information to higher ups allows deeper insight into the organization.

Best Buy is an organization that is obsessive about developing a balanced scorecard with regard to productivity. It includes many factors beyond generating revenue. The scorecard allows the business and employees to focus on something and see productivity success, explained Gretchen Zucker, Executive Director of Ashoka. Best Buy is a client of Ashoka and Zucker said that just having the score inspires Best Buy staffers to become fanatical about that score. They’re obsessed with getting straight A’s.

In addition, Best Buy listens to its employees at an extreme level. For example, the sale of big box TVs is very difficult for them to predict. Instead of using analyst numbers, Best Buy talks to their blue shirts on the floor as to which TVs they think will sell best. As a result, Best Buy has developed a more savvy prediction model of their large screen TVs.

The end of employment for all?

Technology is part of the culprit with pattern recognition and heightened communications. “A computer took my job.” Hear that one before? A significant number of knowledge workers will soon no longer be valuable.

Even though this has always been the case, I argue that we’re seeing a more rapid creation of new jobs than we’ve ever had before. Think of all the jobs that exist today that weren’t around five years ago. Or upon the creation of the Internet industry, millions of knowledge worker jobs that simply didn’t exist before.

Where do you choose to improve productivity?

Looking back at the equation we used to define productivity…

Productivity = Output / Input

Most companies try to focus on the output to increase productivity. But selling your output is something you can’t necessarily know or define. There are so many factors that are out of your control. Conversely, your input can be completely in your control and you can define the entire scope of what it takes, and what you need to reduce in input to create the same or more output.

Creative Commons photo attribution to hawkexpress.