Forget the 30,000’ view of the marketplace, I am going into space for some cosmic observations. I invite you to debate a few of these ideas – one person’s perspective is never enough to really get a complete sense of things!

What is Brain Crack?

Watch the original Brain Crack episode from Ze Frank here.

I do not intend to discourage brainstorming and imagining though – it in itself has tremendous rewards, and often, the ideas in the mind are all that was necessary to have the glorious experience of the idea – the high if you will – and there is no need to execute. Your mind can indeed get the emotions flowing and a somewhat palpable experience of the concept. Plus, execution takes time and effort and sometimes other people too. This is all my way of saying don’t let anyone make you feel pressured. Instead, use the ubiquitous information and inspiration to find your own voice, have your own daydreams, and execute when you feel the irresistible pull.

I’d rather focus on what we do with the execution, more than what we do with ideas.

Twitter is an Innovator, But Not a Leader

Three years ago, when Twitter was a tight knit community of tech and communications early adopters, we literally begged them to charge for the service. We saw the intrinsic value of this real-time, widely distributed conversation and we wanted them to grow into a stable, successful business. As late as November, 2008, Guy Kawasaki ran a poll and over half still said they would be willing to pay – despite the usual snark attack common by internet communities.

Instead, they kept it free, getting more and more investment to cover server and development costs. Twitter has experienced crashes and growth issues throughout its entire history (including today – hence I was inspired to write this post.)

• If Twitter were truly a leader and not just an innovator, it would have seen that “free plus ads” is a very old and not too successful business model.
• If Twitter were truly a leader and not just an innovator, it would have seen that even a nominal fee would all but eliminate the huge waves of spam and bot attacks that cost it money to constantly track, clear out, manage and that irritate its users so much.
• If Twitter were truly a leader and not just an innovator, it would have realized that big numbers hold less and less true value and that the quality of the members, the quality of the conversations, and the quality of innovations being developed by the user community are far more valuable than a whole lot of bots.
• If Twitter investors were leaders, they too would have realized the unique opportunity that Twitter offered in the marketplace. It was truly a game changer – there was nothing like it even remotely. The impact it has had on the world is awe-inspiring to me. But it seems all they can think these days is “build your user base, sell ads around the content, hope Google buys you for an insane amount.”

Leadership is More Risky than Innovation

Although there are many “innovation” initiatives ongoing in this administration, they are not well coordinated or a top priority or championed by knowledgeable leadership. This administration is heavily staffed by academics, lawyers and political types. There is no senior person who has run a large company or built and sold globally a new innovative product. And that partly explains why this administration has been mostly interested in pushing taxes, social spending and regulation — not pushing trade expansion, competitiveness and new company formation.

I can only imagine what a rich and fertile and innovative community Twitter could be if they had listened to their core users and started charging two years ago. Meanwhile, Twitter just buys more servers, gets more investment, and encourages robots. Now it is going down the tired, worn road of embedding ads and extorting others to pay them for ads on the re-purposed user-generated content stream. That is not innovation nor is it leadership IMO. And certainly not as much fun as brain crack.

What’s your opinion? I will talk in a future post about practical ways to find leadership within. It’s an ongoing task I assign to myself.

Photo Credit: “Desert Leader” by Hamed Saber on Flickr.

Aloha,

I interviewed Charlene Kauhane (of Kauhane Inc.) and Keliʻi Brown of the Maui Visitors Bureau over at the Ulupalakua Ranch on Maui. I had been hired to create, staff, and execute a Social Media Campaign for the Bureau, all in the span of less than six weeks. There are many discussion points in here:

• How speed is affecting business and marketing
• The power of collaboration between new media and old media
• Using trust and gut instincts to choose the right partners
• Know how to choose the right mix of skills & reach for media team
• Giving your partners free reign to do what you hired them to do
• Social media has a lot of requirements behind the scene to be successful
• Add training for destination partners as part of the marketing plan

Download iPod Version | Duration: 6:55

Mahalo to our new media team:

Please stay tuned for a followup post where I will share some data with you and the four-pronged approach that helped make this campaign so successful!

Aloha,

When I am doing social web training these days, at least once or twice an hour I implement what I call “Rox’s 180 Rule.” It is very simple, though not always comfortable to implement. As people and companies are learning how to participate on social networks, deciding what sorts of content to create, or even how to set pricing for web-based services, they initially experience that nervous pit in the stomach that comes from a lack of knowledge in the space. Travelers know this angst well – will I be scammed by unscrupulous merchants and fall into a tourist trap?

Most companies tend to move into research mode at this point and seek out what others are doing or attempt to guess what others would want. They find safety in being a copycat, even though that cuts off a key source of creativity right at the beginning: your own experience and understanding. The faster life moves, the less I rely on formal research. It’s something I am exploring in my personal life as well.

Instead I often recommend using the 180 Rule. Simply turn the tables and think of yourself as the customer. What would you want? How would you want to be treated? How much information is too little or too much? What would you be willing to pay? What does that road look like from behind your own eyes?

The old hierarchies of the marketplace are gone now. Anyone can be a publisher, a reviewer, even a service provider. No one entity is in charge of your brand. Thanks to blogging and Twitter, even people who have never used your products can have more influence on buying than any other marketing channel! You can use this peership to your advantage though.

Bruce Fisher of Hawaii-Aloha.com runs a highly personalized travel service here in Hawaii and competes very successfully with the mega online travel agencies like Orbitz and Travelocity. Not only does he use internet platforms smartly he also understands the value of providing local and personal service. He gives what he wants to get: live customer service from people who actually live in Hawaii.

Likewise, 37 Signals, a very successful tech company that proves daily you can charge for your web-based apps, implements the 180 rule in their pricing strategies. They do often have the luxury of creating products with little initial competition. But even when entering such competitive spaces as online jobs, they rely on their own perspective: “What would I be willing to pay for this service and believe to be getting a good value?”

I think the side benefit of this 180 rule is that your business more organically attracts the type of customers who are a good fit for the things you are creating and selling. It’s one more aspect of having genuine conversations with the marketplace, starting in your own office and radiating from there.

Life can be this simple. Look at the situation from 180 degrees—not what would they want but what would you want—the next time you feel confused about how to proceed.

Aloha,

I am speaking tomorrow on The Tools of Change Panel at Envision Hawaii 2009. It has me thinking about what changes are happening right before our very eyes and how we can proactively embrace them to move this party forward with more intention.

Barriers and Gate-Keepers Are Being Removed
One of the most exciting accomplishments for me professionally occurred 5 years ago when one of my clients had her blog added to Tom Peter’s blogroll. Mary Schmidt was a marketing consultant who had a common name in a crowded profession, along with the usual limited budget of a solo-preneur. She was also a risk-taker though and pursued the blog strategy we created for her with religious fervor! (Update: I forgot to mention this. Search for “Mary Schmidt” on Google – and see the results of all-organic SEO.)

She found the thought leader in her profession: Tom Peters – a well-respected, highly paid speaker and consultant who already had a blog himself. (That’s part of being a thought leader in this decade.) Due to the simplicity of being able to comment on his blog, she was able to have a barrier-free conversation with Tom.

That would have been impossible in the old days of “find his office, call in, encounter one or more levels of personal assistants whose job is to screen out callers, get frustrated, and probably fail” unless you were wanting to book him or quote him.

To me, this is a profound shift in the spiritual balance of power among humans. When she told me she had earned a place of respect due to her contributions to the conversation on Tom Peters’ blog, I literally felt the rumble of thousands of years of hierarchy crumbling. The gate-keepers are no longer essential and the ability to connect with each other across virtually every barrier – geographic, economic, social status, etc – is now unlimited. The White House has a blog and a Flickr account – we can comment directly.

Everyone Is a Publisher and a Therapist
The invention of the printing press changed the power structures of the time dramatically. We are seeing another round of that, as information continues to provide access to power. Yet as I realized in a talk I gave earlier this week to the Hawaii Insurance Advisory Board, information is also a tonic. People who share, literally are saving lives via chat rooms and Twitter, as well as providing a steady stream of inspiration.

This seemingly built-in desire to share how-to videos on YouTube and share links of useful information on Twitter and share honestly via Facebook when someone is having a bad day is changing how we think about ourselves and about each other. It is changing how we value things – and pricing becoming a smaller part of the equation in many instances.

It is also confusing us temporarily, as our financial systems are so out-dated. What is that tip you shared really worth to me? I could count hours of time it saved me, or pleasure that I reaped, or even products I created and then resold. Of course each metric will produce a different price. Then I must decide to decide, what it is worth, for me, for now.

Is Psychology Starting to Catch Up with Technology?
I have thought for a long time that we as a species seem to advance much more quickly in virtually every arena except human behavior. The most modern artists and programmers still fall prey to school room urges and antics of competition, of malicious behavior, or under-handed practices in personal and business relationships.

Yet on the social web, these behaviors are more transparent. And they are certainly more commented on! We are each faced with a choice every day: do I follow a herd and jump on the bandwagon of criticism or do I seek out alternate points of view? Do I cut someone some slack as I would have them do unto me or do I cast them aside permanently? Do I move my consciousness forward and not sweat the small stuff or do I pour gas on the flames?

I see people reaching across the aisle daily. I see people being willing to respect different points of view. I see people who seek out their opposites because mechanically speaking, that makes for a stronger platform. I see bloggers talking about art, I see spiritual teachers using tech, I see everyone creating in their own ways opportunities to each beyond our known worlds. Leaving aspects of our families or tribes to explore new frontiers.

To me, this is the real value of social media today: it is letting us share our worlds with each other that we may each become not just smarter, but also kinder and more collaborative when that is what is required. I think of myself these days as consciousness coach as much as anything else. Now that we can all be connected, what really is the point of our connectedness and conversation? That’s the juice that interests me! What interests you and how does the social web support you in that?

Aloha,

Many thanks to the Pacific Business News and the Star Bulletin for covering the recent So Much More Hawaii fam tour with mainland bloggers. I started this writing as a comment on PBN, but I have a rule that when my comments exceed two paragraphs, I move the conversation over to my blog for clarity and for support. (Plus, the Star Bulletin did not allow comments on Ms. Schaefer’s article and PBN does not allow links in their comments – both of which limit the conversation and tend to make me a little grumpy.) As I understand it, this blogger trip is not the first time Hawaii tourism has paid for blogger fam trips – though it is the first official blogger tour and significant campaign of which I am aware. Paying people to come here and write about us has its own issues that I addressed here and here.

Measuring Social Media Campaigns
I agree with Derek (a commenter on PBN) on the point that internet-based marketing campaigns can be far more measurable (and accurate and targeted) than traditional print, radio, and tv-based initiatives. He was responding to this item in the PBN article:

It is difficult to measure the effectiveness of online marketing, but Lu said it may be beyond calculation.

A lot can be measured ex post facto but some of the more critical elements require set-up in advance, not least of which is doing some baseline measurements “in the space” to compare pre and post data. The better social web monitoring services also cost real money, in addition to the time it takes to set them up.

The Hidden Costs of Social Media Campaigns
I am really proud of Christine’s persistence and the state’s willingness to dip their toes in the water. The additional collaborators (hotels, Hawaiian Airlines, Avis & the bloggers) all gave from their pockets to support Hawaii tourism – of which they are a vital part. This was a low-risk venture and hopefully a terrific learning opportunity for people new to social web marketing. This model may not be replicable or scalable though. My concern is that since it was done on the fly (and on the cheap), it may be hard to truly get a sense of what is possible on the social web.

Nonetheless we produced Podcamp Hawaii last year on the fly and on the cheap with outstanding results! (It’s how Christine Lu came to meet Nathan Kam who represents HVCB and David Uchiyama of HTA.) We had over 400 live attendees, thousands more who joined us via live video stream from around the world, and our “tag” – the short label referring to our event (#pch08) – was the #1 trending topic on Twitter for a day (in the world!) and #2 on Flickr (in the world!). We made a huge dent and had people all around the world dreaming about being in Hawaii. We had the support of HVCB, the HCC and many other local businesses. We gave them each a custom landing page on our site – a place to talk directly to our audience – and hundreds of additional blog posts, twitter messages, videos, live stream banner ads, etc.

There is no Podcamp Hawaii 2009 though – despite the hugely positive response. It’s a lot of work for a group of volunteers. I personally logged over 200 hours of my time producing the event – 100% volunteer for this community service. The tools are often free, but the time commitment is substantial with social media.

It is an age old dilemma – people want to try “new” things with very little investment. If it’s successful, it is part luck and part skill. If it’s not, pessimists think they prevail when in fact not enough was invested to make a dent. Remember, blogging has been around for 10 years now; CNN uses the same software Christine used to build the blog; etc. In reality, these are not “new” technologies.

We Are Beginning to Understand the Value of Online Networks
The Harvard Business Review has been covering the social web for years now. I tripped across this article from 2001 (!) today, pointing out the exponential value that is accrued within self-organizing, peer-to-peer online networks. Author David Reed, who called them “GFN’s” for group-forming networks, actually began his research in 1997 and states:

I’ve been studying GFNs for the last four years and have come to realize that they require a whole new way of measuring network value. Indeed, I think companies that can capitalize on the power of GFNs will gain the strongest competitive advantages that the Internet has to offer.

Caveat: I know Christine Lu and several of the bloggers personally and have been trying to persuade various tourism entities to learn more about the social web, Here’s just one recent example. The interactive web is not easy to understand from the outside, just like most foreign cultures. In this “place” there are people issues as well as software and technology issues, thus making “understanding” a daunting task to be sure. OTOH (on the other hand) it is a very open, embracing environment though and “newbies” are always welcome!

Want to Learn More?
Our local chapter of the global Social Media Club meets once a month and our meetings are free, open to anyone, and feature informative speakers and excellent networking. Our next event is Friday, June 12th at the ING DIRECT Cafe in Waikiki. Come join us, and learn why the Club’s tagline is, “If you get it, share it.” This month’s topic is “Online Reputation Management.”

Shane and I are also launching KnowHow Café – a place to learn more about the social web, online productivity, audio and video podcasting, blogging, Twitter, and more. Join our email list to be notified of upcoming online and live, in-person classes. Use the promo code “bfs” to help us know where you heard about us. We are mid-way through a six week course called “Getting Started on the Social Web.” I’ll be posting more about that in the coming week, time permitting! Once again, time is a critical resource on the social web.

With Aloha,

I sometimes chide my business audiences when I am speaking from the podium with this question:
“Now, why don’t you have your own internet TV show/channel?” When you consider that only a few years ago it was impossible for anyone except the big media outlets to broadcast video content, and now you and I can do it for almost nothing, it is quite mind-boggling. Of course, that is why so few have jumped on board – and why the opportunity for those who do is quite extraordinary.

If you are a “solo-preneur” aka one person band, you can easily have a talking head show filmed from your desktop. If you are a larger company, you have tremendous assets at your fingertips, not to mention stories to be told, brands to be built, and customers to be educated and entertained.

Here is some newly released data to continue the discussion:

From Podcasting News: Internet Video Platform to grow 400% in 4 years

Worldwide shipments of devices that support Internet video consumption will nearly quintuple by 2013, according to electronics industry analysts iSuppli, spurred by an increase in consumers’ broadband Internet access.

Edison Research has been studying the internet podcasting phenomenon (this applies to audio and video content), and their data have demonstrated continuous growth. (See bar chart above.)

Consumers Expect to Find Their Content Online • Broadband access is now the norm, and weekly online audio and online video usage have reached critical mass • Media not meeting consumer expectations will suffer as their brand-loyal users will find other options far more easily

If you think online video is not applicable for traditional brands, consider that CBS News today has launched a live stream channel on uStream, and the traditional health care company, Johnson & Johnson, has had a YouTube channel for over a year. Thanks again to Rob Halpert for being a guest speaker at Podcamp Hawaii. And for you audio and/or CSI fans, the F.B.I. has several audio podcasts. That’s the official Federal Bureau of Investigation – not the guys “From Big Island” as reads a popular t-shirt here in Hawaiʻi.

Aloha,

Brian Solis, a truly forward thinking PR professional and co-founder of the Social Media Club, took the time and captured a lot of the same thoughts I had, yet was reluctant to post in detail when I discussed Google, the FTC, and paid links. I too am influenced by my friends and business colleagues, and am trying to influence the discussion of social media practices here in Hawaii as a long time practitioner and also a founding member of the Social Media Club. (Whose tag line is, “If you get it, share it.” sometimes people don’t want to get it though – they are more comfortable doing business in the old ways.)

Please read: This is Not a Sponsored Post by Brian Solis

My post now is in response to Brian and the discussion taking place over at WebProWorld.com – where the opinion of bloggers among web managers and SEO experts is not too positive.

On a blog you never know as there is no way to know. Google warned about this a long time ago, likely because they remember how the FTC reatced [sp] to sponsored links when Se’s tried to disguise they were paid advertising, It is the law… bloggers aren’t above it.

These new brand ambassadors are almost the perfect instruments for surreptitiously sparking and cultivating groundswell within desired and vital target markets.

Consumers look to experts and trusted peers for guidance and insight when making decisions.

Who’s to say that the information they’re receiving from their trusted sources is indeed truthful and honest, if they’re unaware that these authorities are actually directly or indirectly compensated for their opinions and insights.

To me, blogging has become a big enough industry that it now replicates behaviors that humanity has gravitated towards “naturally.” Some travel bloggers, like some travel writers for mainstream press, now receive paid fam trips. We all like to think we are free thinkers – but when we are being paid, that does change things. We are not as impartial. Nearly impossible for all but the crankiest among us.

When a beloved blogger gets laid off from her job and appears to serendipitously take a trip to Hawaii to get her life sorted out, her readers responded with support and compassion. How would they feel if they knew it was an all expenses paid trip, courtesy of the tourism industry?

The really good news is that all parties stand to gain more by tweaking this relationship a little bit, and doing business in a more transparent manner.

Problem:

• Advertiser pays blogger for specific reviews or specific trips, knowing that they will get better than blind coverage.


• Blogger hides said compensation to maintain appearance of independence and not taint the story with “pay per post” energy.


• Google is aware of this and is working diligently to find a way to ignore “advertorial” postings.


• Blogger has to hustle on a case by case basis to cover costs and receive just compensation fro the incredible work being done building a targeted and loyal audience.


• Advertiser has to jump from blogger to blogger in search of hidden paid endorsements.  


• Both run the risk of being outed with the ensuing backlash.


• Readers do not get the whole truth.


• The problem holds true even if there is a page hidden away somewhere on your blog that says you got paid for something.

• A statement of acknowledgement belongs on every post not just in the back of the blog.


• I’d like to see a generic icon developed that indicates some form of compensation was received for the item(s) mentioned in this post. It has become very popular to nuance the language these days, “no one was paid for their time” – yeah, but they did get an all expenses paid trip to Hawaii with access to countless not-so-obvious products, services, and people right? That dear readers, is compensation to me. Is it to you?


• Advertisers are better served by developing a relationship with bloggers who have an audience in their desired space. They should step up and provide ongoing paid support for that blogger, so s/he can continue to do the fine work and build the audience. This goes for the people developing social media campaigns too. There is a lot of effort that goes into creating these campaigns, effectively.


• This means not paying for specifics on a per trip or per product basis, but by being a proud sponsor of said blog. Create some distance. Get your banner ad, write the check, participate in the comments, and otherwise stay out of the way.


• Let the blogger pay for their own products and services unless each mention of said item is disclosed.


• Blogger can thank the sponsors at any time; it’s good etiquette. They can be transparent about the help and the money they are getting. There is nothing to hide here when it;s being handled ethically.


• The NPR model works so well. “This blog/this post is brought to you by ABC.” Then everyone knows the deal and can make their own decisions.


• I know the loyal viewers of our BeachWalks.tv internet show would be thrilled for us to get a sponsor who truly grokked the value we bring to people’s lives. They often even suggest sponsors they would like to hear from, who they think are a good fit for our show. How many instances do you know of that happening?

The agency should be proud to support aka sponsor bloggers and bloggers should stop pretending they are immune to editorial standards of disclosure. If a big company did this – like Walmart did with its fake videoblogger/RV across America tour a few years back – they would (and did!) get nailed for it in public.

There really is a win-win-win in here! But advertisers and bloggers have to remember one of the fundamental rules of the social web: TRANSPARENCY. We can move business ethics forward, support the companies and the bloggers and the audience. Really, it’s not that hard. I am confident it will get worked out sooner than later.

Aloha,

This is not Pick on Twitter month – I am just posing some questions to get the attention of those who see things for what they are, not how they should be.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the effects of Twitter’s popularity and just did a phone  interview with Janice Magin of the Pacific Business News on how many local businesses are getting on Twitter. Twitter has become incredibly popular, and so that does by default lower the value proposition. I am thrilled that small business is embracing social media. Being on Twitter is becoming a new normal. However that also raises the challenge bar for how to use it innovatively.  If everyone is offering a coupon, then a coupon is no big deal. Same is true of traditional coupons.

Dell was a leader in selling $1M worth of used computers on Twitter on 6 mos last year; they now offer exclusive discounts to their followers. When people have thousands of others in their stream, more of your messages will be filtered out. The people with the longest experience on Twitter know about these filtering tools, and many only respond to ”@” messages or “DM’s” ignoring the general stream from their followers.It’s not rudeness or snobbery; it’s just math.

My colleague, Robyn Levin, stated it well on her blog:

On a whole, I think this is a good thing, but here’s the problem: whenever technology becomes fashion, return-on-investment (ROI) tends to get lost in the excitement of the latest .com catwalk.

My “here and now” mind says that this explosion of connectivity and creativity is producing “wins” from many unlikely sources – just like the story of Ed Morita’s Twitter Case Study at Social Media Club Hawaii we recently profiled. It says that people are able to filter themselves too and proactively signup for things that are if interest. 

My consumer mind is sick of the automated robots, spammers, and auto-DM’s on Twitter. Please go away and join me in supporting #noAutoDM.

I do think there is a some incredible creativty to be tapped there. Just keep in mind that much tactical advice for “how to use Twitter” gets out-dated within 3-6 months at this current pace. The place just keeps morphing in new directions. One thing that seems to be a constant is the desire for authentic conversation. Getting one of those ”@” messages directly to you sure does get your attention now doesn’t it? It’s just not that practical for mass marketing.

If we look at the photo in this post, you might see lemmings jumping blindly to their death or you might see cliff jumpers taking the fast and exhilarating ride down into the sea. Much of social media is what you make of it.

If you are someone who uses filtered groups and keyword search notifications to manage your Twitter stream, I have a question for you:

What percent of your filtering is for friends vs. business competitors vs. tracking companies from whom you buy things?

If it all gets to be too much noise for you, you can do like Loic Le Meur did: unfollow everyone and start over.

Aloha,

Does that title look like a foreign language? Somedays it feels like the web truly is its onw country. There certainly is a lot of jargon and even more unique behaviors and business practices that are found only online. I am sharing one of those practices in this post and several tech terms. Follow the links to learn more or see the concepts in action on live web pages.

A colleague and friend of mine, Toby Bloomberg, is writing a “Tweet-Book” on Social Media Marketing. She is featuring different authors for each chapter, drawing from her extensive network. She is a great example of someone who not only shares her knowledge but her network too. Here is how Toby defines a tweet-book:

It’s a book written using Twitter as platform and distribution channel. Social Media Marketing GPS #smgps is the first business book to experiment with this format. This Twitter-book is structured as a “real” business book and includes: a foreword, introduction and chapters. Each chapter will have a 1 question interview with people knowledgeable about the topic. All posts will be hash-tagged #smgps.

Toby asked me to author the chapter on Internet Video, and I happily agreed. I wrote all of my postings in advance (18 in total). This was to be able to send the content easily to Toby and to be able to organize my thoughts. The Twitter stream shows newest first, tho Toby is going to publish these in ascending numerical order. So that meant that each tweet message should have enough info to not only stand alone but to make sense regardless of wich order someone was reading them. Each tweet is numbered, to make the conversation a little easier to follow.

Toby can easily find this content because she is using a hashtag: #smgps. Each tweet must include that tag or label to be aggregated, or automatically collected, online. That makes it easy for Toby to grab the content because it automatically filters out any unrelated tweets that might be in my timeline – which is the listing of Twitter messages I have posted.

Now, I did have a bad link in one of my tweets so I added an addendum to correct it. (And corrected the original version here, tho I cannot do that in Twitter, sadly. Here follows the conversation, in order posted.

1. Online Video Chapter of the tweet-book created by @TobyDiva 1 #smgps. Aloha & Welcome! Stay tuned for tips and tricks. about 1 hour ago from twhirl
2. Online video: If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is priceless! And the web has surely noticed. 2 #smgps about 1 hour ago from twhirl
3. Online video comes in 4 flavors: live-stream, talking head cam, edited shows, & screen cast tutorial 3 #smgps about 1 hour ago from twhirl
4. Online video takes more time/equipment to produce & yet is more compelling & transparent than text or audio blogging 4 #smgps about 1 hour ago from twhirl
5. Online video hosting is free at these sites: blip.tv, viddler.com, youtube.com, dailymotion.com & many more 5 #smgps about 1 hour ago from twhirl
6. Online video: YouTube is home to quality shows like JNJ Health Channel from Johnson & Johnson; don’t dismiss it for your business 6 #smgps about 1 hour ago from twhirl
7. Online video delivers max results when you provide both a Flash version that allows embed sharing plus an RSS feed for iTunes 7 #smgps about 1 hour ago from twhirl
8. Online video: curiously, audio quality is more important than picture quality. Invest in an external mic & supported camera 8 #smgps about 1 hour ago from twhirl
9. Online video: When it is nearly free to produce and host, why don’t you or your company have its own internet TV show yet? ;-p 9 #smgps about 1 hour ago from twhirl
10. Online video: Do you have something to say? Yes. If you freeze in front of the camera, practice on unimportant topics first.10 #smgps about 1 hour ago from twhirl
11. Online video: Consider having your business sponsor an existing show with built-in audience to get the feel of how video works 11 #smgps about 1 hour ago from twhirl
12. Online video: Conversion rates & brand recall are several fold higher with podcasting ads than with banner or text ads 12 #smgps about 1 hour ago from twhirl
13. Online video book reference: Web Video: Making It Great, Getting It Noticed by Jennie Bourne http://bit.ly/jb-webvideo 13 #smgps about 1 hour ago from twhirl [Link corrected!]
14. Online video work flow tip: build a template with recurring items: theme music, URL, contact info, copyright, logo 14 #smgps about 1 hour ago from twhirl
15. Online video branding tip: use the same theme for recurring episodes and have your own original music 15 #smgps about 1 hour ago from twhirl
16. Online video marketing tip: post your videos to www.TubeMogul.com to auto cross-post to multiple sites & get stats 16 #smgps about 1 hour ago from twhirl
17. Online video: join us at www.barefeetstudios.com for more howto and business case studies using video 17 #smgps about 1 hour ago from twhirl
18. Online video: Chill out in #Hawaii with us on Beach Walks with Rox, www.beachwalks.tv, Aloha & Mahalo for joining us! 18 #smgps about 1 hour ago from twhirl

Followed by these two tweets:

• @haveAwonderful Thank you for correction; reposting now! about 1 hour ago from twhirl


• Online Video URL Correction: web video book by Jennie Bourne http://bit.ly/jb-webvideo #smgps about 1 hour ago from twhirl

Aloha,

I recently read in the Pacific Business News about the HVCB (Hawaii Convention & Visitors Bureau) Hawaii: A Thousand Reasons to Smile Campaign. It’s targeted at residents of San Francisco, who are frequent visitors here. I support the idea of reaching out to San Francisco residents – I have many friends there including Chris Heuer, Kristie Wells, Stowe Boyd, Susan Bratton, and Elyse Tager along with Charlene Li, Scott Simpson and Jeremiah Owyang, many of whom love Hawaii and come here wanting to meet the locals. They are generally smart, friendly, successful people who are used to spending money.

However, may I politely suggest that the way to attract them is NOT with a last century web site built on a 100% flash interface that loads s-l-o-w-l-y and is very controlling in its navigation schema, restricting how the user can (not) truly explore where s/he wants to go?

I would have liked to point this campaign to my San Francisco friends, who also happen to be active web users, who themselves have a large “following” via blogs, social networks, Twitter, et al. As it is, there are too many “last century” flags on this campaign, so instead, I am using it as a learning opportunity. GoHawaii/HVCB will get attention in any case!

Together, just those few friends mentioned above have over 75,000 followers on Twitter. Even if you don’t know about Twitter, this translates as follows: These people carry influence and are well known in the smart, hip, savvy circles of San Francisco. Exactly the kind of people this campaign wants.

There are also many people who live here and have friends all over, and who are also active on the social web like Neenz, Arleen Anderson, Angela Keen, Vernon Brown, and Ryan Ozawa.

This is a collective of natural communicators with large networks who represent a missed opportunity on this campaign because it does not take advantage of social media tools and practices. Instead, HVCB reached out to mostly newspaper editors and a few paid bloggers. Pardon me, aren’t newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, going out of business on a daily basis? I don’t mean to suggest either/or – new media or old media – they both can play. I do mean to suggest that this campaign is completely unfriendly to social media influencers. I do understand it is natural and easier to do what you know, however, that is no longer a viable or responsible option, whether using taxpayer or stockholder monies or not.

Let’s Get Real

The San Francisco Bay Area is home to the Cluetrain Manifesto and the now decade-long march toward transparency in communication and marketing. Hawaii tourism officials would do well to read the book. I have several copies and would be delighted to loan them out to anyone who is interested. It is also available online for free. Email me.

Faking things up is not part of the mindset with the smart and savvy in San Francisco. Instead think living green, being politically and socially active, being at leading edge of technology, and setting the pace for change in almost every aspect of life today.

Having a Contest v1.0

Why have secret judges when you can have the community on the internet get engaged, give you more page views, and do the judging for you? Compare this to the Queensland Department of Tourism, who created the World’s Greatest Job contest. Mind you, I still don’t like the slow and user-unfriendly flash interface as I have yet to find a way to re-locate or link to some of my favorite video submissions. But the concept and most of the execution is fantastic, and remarkably similar to an idea I had last year. 34,000 people submitted 1-minute videos from all over the world. They got buzz from all spheres of web users – geeks as well as tourists, news organizations and justified critics.

They are using the internet to talk to people who live, work, and play on the internet, and they willingly embraced the communication practices of the modern internet: transparency, simplicity (look at their rules/submission page), play nice with others, and embrace peer-to-peer power among a few. Sadly, GoHawaii and HVCB are using the internet as it existed 5-10 years ago. It doesn’t make us look as smart as we can be.

Why Are The Events So Un-Promote-Able???

Back to the Smiles Campaign. The Music Events Are Very Cool: they (we, from taxpayer money) are sending local musicians to play at Gordon Biersch locations in the Bay Area and I am thrilled my friend Mailani Makainai is among them. This is in itself a great gig for promoting Hawaiian music, something very dear to my heart for years!

But why is all the info stuffed into a flash file – not indexable by search engines or easily bookmarked much less read by humans? The page is also not printable and the scroll bar is hard to see. Why is this not on a blog with linkable pages, ratings, comments, Twitter postings, etc? Why is there not a Flickr group collecting photos of the musicians teaching folks how to shaka at all of these locations, getting cross-posted to Facebook, Twitpic, etc?

Nathan Kam is doing his best (and rocking his personal brand!) by posting photos of the (old school) San Francisco campaign launch on his personal account when this could and should be rolled under a more strategized web asset for the campaign IMO. Nathan – I love you and hope this post gets you more support as you are one of the precious few trying to learn and implement social media practices. Big {{hugs}} to you for going above and beyond to take, post, and tag the photos of the reception!

Why is there no tag so people can talk about this event using internet shorthand, and so search engines can aggregate all of the related content? If they had used the social web instead of a 4 flash pages, the HVCB could actually measure the effectiveness of the campaign not to mention generating incredible Google juice – done mostly for free by other people!

Does Share Mean Spam?

Just when I was about to give up hope, I decided to click the Share link, hoping to see links to my favorite social networks! Alas, it was just an email form with no mention of privacy or if those friends’ email addresses I might share go into a tourism database to be spammed from here to eternity. Do they? I hope not; in any case I won’t risk it. “Share” these days means using web plug-ins to tell your friends on Facebook, Digg, Yahoo Buzz or save to your own Delicious bookmarks! For people like me who like to share, these tools are much easier, faster, fun, and effective than trying to remember people’s email addresses and type them into a form, without their permission.

Even the URL is dated:

I wonder if this blog post will offend some, and they will not speak up as is local custom. I would prefer you do speak up, and help me understand the logic behind this campaign – or at least let’s start a discussion here or at another location. I write this because I so love this land of Hawaii. I write this because I see tourism as an oportunity to improve relationships within our state and with our visitors. I’ve been told by a select few tourism officials that I care more about the state than those paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to do so. I write this because I find it so frustrating that our tourism, advertising, and PR leaders are still doing things in such old-fashioned, expensive, boring, and ineffective ways. There is opportunity all around us; we started the discussions at Podcamp + Wordcamp Hawaii, but I am impatient.

Before You Leave…

Please visit this web site, A Thousand Reasons to Smile. Compared to the SF Blitz PR, which one draws you in more? To some it is just plain old user-generated content but it speaks to me far more than GoHawaii’s polished, pretty, perfect, no-one-home, old-attempt-at-selling-the-fantasy Hawaii site. BTW, this blog came up #1 in a Google search for “A Thousand Reasons to Smile.” That is the name of the Hawaii campaign.

Hawaii, my darling, it is time to let go of controlling every aspect of the message. It is time to put behind the pretty flash sites in favor of messier and livelier blogs and social networks. It is time to bring new blood into your agencies. Your friends can stay, but they are not keeping up with the times. We can teach them – who wants to learn?

I have been giving free talks on this stuff since early 2005. I decided it’s time someone spoke up and mentioned that we, together, can do a much better job of spreading Aloha, of telling the world about these beautiful and imperfect islands in the piko of the planet. I hope you will tell me what you think!

Me ke aloha pumehana,