Consumer Generated Content -- i.e. You! -- is Time's Person of the Year

I'd heard a rumor that "consumer generated content" -- i.e. you, us, all of us! -- was Time Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year (Dec. 25, 2006 issue). Turns out it's true. More later but wanted to get this up.

In a word, this is very cool. Touché!

"But look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men. It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes."
- from Time cover story (Dec. 25, 2006)

And then this sentence:

"We're looking at an explosion of productivity and innovation, and it's just getting started, as (Ed note: itals are mine) millions of minds that would otherwise have drowned in obscurity get backhauled into the global intellectual economy."
- Time (Dec. 25, 2006 cover story)

A few tips from SNCR's Inaugural Research Symposium

Having questioned whether live blogging is a good thing or not... I'm here this morning at The Colonnade in Boston to bring you a few tips from the Society for New Communications Research Inaugural Research Symposium.

First, a word of thanks to SNCR executive director Jennifer McClure who has worked incredibly hard to produce this event. (Thanks Jen!) Second, in the spirit of full disclosure, I am an SNCR Fellow (oops, looks like I need to add my bio).

You won't find anything, er, snarky in what I write today, given that I'm not a totally impartial observer.

The New Influencers

Tech jurnalist and consultant Paul Gillin offers a few highlights from his new book: The New Influencers: A Marketer's Guide to the New Social Media (to be published in spring 2007).

Tidbits from Paul:

- Used to be that a happy customer tells 3 people about your company; an unhappy customer tells 10 people. Now, via blogs, an unhappy customer tells 10,000 people. He shows as an example the by now iconic video clip of customer Vincent Ferrari trying to cancel his AOL account. (Yes, the AOL customer service rep was ultimately fired.)

- "Marketing has become a spread-sheet driven discipline."  But that's not working anymore, says Gillin. He's referring, presumably, to impressions, click-throughs and other Web metrics that online marketers live and die by.

- Refers to P&G CEO A.G. Lafley's keynote speech to the ANA's annual conference and his key point: marketers are most likely to succeed when they let customers be in control.

More later... maybe. I'm gonna just listen for a while.

Useful Links

AOL said, 'If you leave me, I'll do something crazy' - Randall Stross's Digital Domain column in The New York Times (requires subscription).

Backbone Media and Northeastern University's Blogging Success Study (published Nov. 2, 2006)

Nielsen BuzzMetrics' Pete Blackshaw gives The Corporate Blogging Book a thumbs up in a thoughtful review

Pete Blackshaw, CMO of Nielsen BuzzMetrics, has written a thoughtful book review cum analysis of the current state of corporate blogging in his latest article for ClickZ: Corporate Blogging: Great Liberator of Oxymoron.

A bit of the backstory... he peppered me with questions via email last week before writing the column. Then went off and wrote his own thing. It's the most substantive and useful review I've read to date. He really gets it -- both my book (it was published last week) and blogging as it relates to business. For example, he writes:

There's nothing terribly novel or catchy about the title, "The Corporate Blogging Book," but this speaks volumes about the book's straight-to-the-point practicality and usefulness. - Pete Blackshaw

Thanks Pete. Would you believe that Penguin Portfolio and I spent months coming up with that title? Ultimately it was my suggestion. I thought an obvious, clearly descriptive title would get picked up in Google searches; it has.

I also wanted a "corporate-friendly" title that wouldn't scare off my intended readers. Much as I love Naked Conversations as a title, those (naked c's) are about the last thing a corporate suit wants to have.

Pete also puts me in august blogging company by mentioning me in the same breath with Robert Scoble (who is, I gotta say from personal acquaintance, an awfully nice guy):

Like Robert Scoble, she projects both authenticity and humility. This comes across in her blog as well. She's a great listener and reluctant to over-preach blog dogma or must-haves until she's absorbed lots of content and conversations about the topic. - PB

Towards the end of his article, Pete picks a small nit by questioning whether I go deeply enough into how a blog fits with a company's operational culture. He writes:

... though Weil gets it right about the power and importance of authenticity, she misses some key opportunities to discuss the conspicuous disconnects between a corporate blog's "come talk to me" welcome mat and the typical customer service department's unmistakably grim "don't talk to me" sign. - PB

Good point. Pete is talking about the execution phase of corporate blogging, how it fits in not just with a company's marketing efforts but with everything a company does in interacting with customers.

As yet this is an area too new and unformed to be written about decisively (at least it was by my Dec. 31, 2005 deadline for the book). Of course, it's great fodder for the next edition of The Corporate Blogging Book... or for my next book!

Useful Links

Corporate Blogging: Great Liberator of Oxymoron (Pete Blackshaw's ClickZ column - August 8, 2006)

Should Corporations or Brands Blog: Why and How? (on Pete's ConsumerGeneratedMedia blog)

My riff on Beyond Blogging... it won't be about "cool"

Here's a Q&A on Beyond Blogging that I did by email with Chris Heuer of Beyond Blogging 2006.

Tomorrow's event started out as a breakfast roundtable at the Mayflower Hotel. It has mushroomed to 500+ people thanks to great organizing and WOMM (word-of-mouth-marketing) by sponsors Fleishman-Hillard and DC Communicator.

The keynote speaker is Ed Keller, co-author of The Influentials. Other distinguished panelists include Pete Blackshaw, Yvonne DiVita and Todd Tweedy. The moderator is the inimitable Shel Holtz. Should be fun. I'm excited about participating.

Event details here.

Skeptical about CGM? Traffic to Blogger.com has increased 528%

In doing a bit of research for a talk I'm giving tomorrow here in D.C. (to the local chapters of IPRA and PRSA-NCC) I've been looking for stats on the growth in CGM - Consumer Generated Media. Here's one I found in yesterday's Washington Post, reporting on a new study by ComScore Media Metrix. From the Post:

"The number of people posting or reading material at [Blogger.com] jumped to 15.6 million last month from 2.5 million a year ago."

In other words, traffic to Google-owned Blogger.com increased 528 percent [scroll down for complete Washington Post chart] between Feb. 2005 and Feb. 2006. That counts those reading and writing blogs hosted on the free Blogger.com service.

There's been a similar explosion in traffic to MySpace.com,the social networking site of choice for young adults. MySpace is now the #10 most visited site on the Web. It attracted 37 million visitors last month, 28 million more than a year ago (a 318 percent increase).

I like this traffic metric, BTW. While we're bombarded with stats on the growth in number of blogs (over 33 million, according to Technorati), the number of people spending time on blogs - reading or writing them - is really more significant. It's people's behaviour online that tells us whether or not blogging and social networking sites are re-making our experience of the Web. Don't you agree?

Useful Links

Chart of the Top 50 Web Domains (as ranked by ComScore)

Pete Bradshow, chief marketing officer of Nielsen BuzzMetrics, coined the term CGM. Check out his Consumer Generated Media blog.

Blog knowledge center by Cymfony

Here's a great resource page with information about business blogging. Links to studies, best practices, Top Tens, Top Elevens, etc. Prepared by Cymfony, a market research firm that uses a proprietary content analysis engine to scour the Web. BTW, if it isn't totally obvious, creating a knowledge or resource center with links out to other sources is one of the best ways for a company like this to market itself.

I've added the page to my own Blogging 101 resources.

You'll also find links to resource pages on CGM (Consumer Generated Media), PR Measurement and Web 2.0.

[via Business BlogWire]

The debate continues: WOMM vs. stealth marketing

No time to write but want to point out this hugely funny parody of WOMM (word of mouth marketing) in The Onion: "I'd Love This Product Even If I Weren't a Stealth Marketer."

And as a counterpoint, WOMMA's (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) new white paper, "Word of Mouth 101," which you can download here. I really like WOMMA's founders, Andy Sernovitz and Pete Blackshaw of Intelliseek. So I figure there must be an ethical way to do WOMM. I need to learn more about it.