Marketers Continue to Rate Email the Most Effective Digital Marketing Tactic

Link to content: http://www.marketingcharts.com/online/marketers-continue-to-rate-email-the-most-effective-digital-marketing-tactic-46295/

Health Care Social Media Tools

There has been a lot of discussion recently on the impact of social media on the healthcare industry. I've written about the topic here on this blog. Many people are in agreement that the healthcare industry will be transformed both by any upcoming regulatory reform and by the impact of social media. My guess is that social media will begin to have its effect before government driven reform gets started. But this is just a lot of big picture thinking...what is possible now? Who is twittering? what are the social networks?

Here is a short list of the social media sites I've come across. If you know of any others, just leave the link in the comments...

First of all, Ed Bennett, a web manager at a hospital has compiled a list of 172 hospitals with links to all the social networks they participate in. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter...they are all here. Check out the list here.

Twitters that I follow:
(This is a good slideshow on the basics of Twitter from a healthcare point of view.)
@Health_IT
@mdtrussell
@mdbraber
@act4healthcare
@UH_Sci_Flack
@mencarna
@TrishaTorrey
@jerseygrl
@AdamGross
@naimul
@planetrussell
@healthTF
@OHSUNews
@ShermanHealth
@rilescat
@LungAssociation
@joemd
@healthmashr
@FamilyDoctorMag

This is a comprehensive list of people in the healthcare industry on Twitter: http://twittgroups.com/group/healthcare

Social Networks
Patientslikeme.com
Dailystrength.org
hospitalimpact.ning.com/
themedica.com/
enurgi.com/
qnahealth.com

LinkedIn Groups
Health 2.0
Health Informatics Technology (HIT)
Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society
Healthcare Technology Alliance
Healthcare-IT/ EHR/ HIS
Professionals in Pharmaceutical Industry and Biotech Industry

Blogs/Posts/etc.- Background Social Media and Healthcare
Twitter in Healthcare
Twitter a Healthcare Marketing Tool? Maybe
140 Health Care Uses for Twitter
Newsweek's take on Health 2.0

And oh, by the way, if you'd like to fill out a survey I've been running on the use of social media in the healthcare industry, please click here.

Links, Links, Links

I'm not sure the technology world is going to be hurt as much as the housing, finance and industrial markets are. Dealflow seems to be strong. However, given the impending collapse of western civilization, here are some interesting datapoints for the world to enjoy:

Blogging for Dollars: Slate's Michael Agger gives a overview (for dummies) of the blogosphere and how bloggers make $$ for all the people who are going to be laid off this year.

FDA Takes End Run to Award Contract to PR Firm A local PR agency continues its epic quest to be the scuzziest PR agency in America.

No Credit Crunch in the Channel According to eWeek, there is plenty of cash in the tech world and no signs of scarce credit, unlike our friends in finance, homebuilding or industry. Of course, this could change at any moment I guess


Pirates reveal new side with spokesperson Somali pirates contact NY Times to tell their side of the story, according to PR Week.

I'll be posting my notes from Interact08 later on, but check out Rohit Bhargava's Top 5 Takeaways here in the meantime.

Silicon Valley Goes Dry Lastly, Red Herring's Ken Schachter reports on the shutting of the IPO and M&A windows. Tech companies are going to have to grow organically a little longer than they thought before cashing out.

And the NASDAQ is only down 3.5% today!! Yay!

What Does A Community Manager Do?

Happy Monday Morning! There is a great post by Chris Brogan about the characteristics, requirements and expectations of a community manger. Please read it immediately to get a sense of what a successful social community manager both does and how it define and measure success.

Here is a flavor:

Measurements

I’d measure my community manager on the following:

• Responsiveness to communications (blog comments, emails, twitter messages and forum threads) less than 24 hours max.
• Number of QUALITY blog posts read and shared via Google Reader.
• Number of meaningful comments (more than a few words, on topic, pertinent to the space) on appropriate blogs, videos, and other media per month.
• Overall quality of her Twitter stream ( maybe a 60/30/10 mix of industry-related / personal @ comments / and off-topic).
• Engagement on our blog/community/network. (Number of subscribers, number of comments, number of links out to other blogs from our community site).
• Number of quality blog posts and linking posts (probably a 40/60 split between original and linked, though some would argue for 30/70).
• Eventually, number of links from other sites to our blogs and media.

Success of the Project

I’d feel our community manager was a success if she accomplished the following through her efforts:

• Empower the listening ability of our organization to our community’s needs and desires.
• Build an awareness of our organization through non-marketing efforts, measured by favorable or at least non-negative mentions on other blogs, forums, and in Twitter.
• Deliver a blog and/or media platform that’s useful to the community at large, and that grows in number of subscribers as well as engaged commenters.

Overall, I believe these efforts would be measured by an increase in attendance at our face-to-face and virtual events, an increase in subscriptions to our newsletter, and a larger blog commenting community. This would be a win to our organization, and would thus be worth the expense of another salaried employee.

Chris has outlined a strong, ROI focused definition of what a company should look for in an internal employee. Read the comments section to learn about how people are objecting- mostly about the issue of measurement.

Got Schwerpunkt?

This morning as I was dozing between snooze buttons, the thought came to me that marketing executives looking at social media for the first, or thirtieth, time ought keep the principle of schwerpunkt foremost in their minds. What is schwerpunkt you ask?

Schwerpunkt is a term of art from the military meaning "focal point" or "main effort" or "center of gravity." Clausewitz wrote about schwerpunkt in his 1832 best-seller On War. In the military sense, it means maximum effort and force at the enemy's weakest spot. It also means a focus on the important task, rather than any subordinate tasks. See this example from William Wakes' blog:

From Chris Crawford on Game Design:

"But there's one word, a German word, that we haven't yet stolen that should be high on our list of targets: schwerpunkt. It means 'focal point' or 'concentration of effort point' or 'central point of attack.' It's a beautiful word because it expresses an idea that we just don't have in English: the notion that, in any effort, you may have many necessary tasks, but there is one central task that must take first place in your considerations."

Crawford gives an example of the army: the cook is important, but the soldier (and fighting) is the shwerpunkt. In games, he says, interactivity is the schwerpunkt. It leads me to ask, what is the schwerpunkt for what I'm doing?

In public relations, understanding is the schwerpunkt. Tasks like press releases, Twitters, media tours, websites, blogs, pitches, case studies, webinars and speeches are all potentially part of a successful PR campaign, but the main focus is communicating ideas is such a way so that they are understood. In order to do so, you must first carefully study your audiences, your own company, your marketplace in order to determine where, in fact, the schwerpunkt, or main focus, ought to be. Listening, as well as talking.

Agree? Disagree? I'd love to hear your thoughts...

Monday's Links

It's a Monday, so here is just a quick list of the blogs that caught my attention today:

38 Must Reads on Online Reputation Management, Glen Allsopp

There's Plently of Value in Awareness, Josh Catone

D.C. Social Media Has Blown Up, Now to Get the Entrepreneurship Going, Nick O'Neill

Oh, and let's see- local PR firm gets caught with less than sharp interns.

FriendFeed

Thanks to a post on Louis Gray's blog, I've discovered FriendFeed. As many of you probably realize, keeping track of all of the conversations happening simultaneously on dozens of social networking sites is a challenge to say the least. FriendFeed aims to solve (umm, maybe just help deal with) this problem by providing a place to pull all the feeds from all your social media networks in to one large feed. I've signed up for it and it makes things a bit easier to deal with.

Check out my feed here: http://friendfeed.com/theprguy

Social Networks- Good PR?

The question of PR versus advertising has been around for a long time. Al Ries wrote a book entitled, "The Fall of Advertising and The Rise of PR", that describes how PR is better suited to marketing today's products and services. Nowadays, the growth of cheap (land line and mobile) broadband combined with free, easy to use simple CMS software like weblogs, wikis and social networks has empowered users, customers, prospects, and critics to organize themselves on their own terms.

Nothing new about that.

So I chuckled when I read in BizReport about WPP's results from social networking for their customers (emphasis mine).

WPP found that more of their clients were interested in keeping consumers updated on company changes, events and specials and that social networking sites were a good way to do this. However, advertising on social networks was not as popular, leading the company to deduce that social networks are helping businesses but in a different way than originally thought.

From the beginning, many businesses have been interested in creating branded micro-sites within social networks. What this trend report indicates is that this is a good way to connect with a user-base, to introduce new products or to keep consumers updated on sales or company events.

To someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To ad agency, everything looks like a opportunity to sell ads.

Do Not Copy Other People's Stuff

It's been said before. Everyone should have picked this up in school. Maybe in the past, before the Internet, you might be tempted to copy a paragraph or a sentence here and there. No more. The Internet is forever, and everything you write is there forever. And it's almost instantly search able.
Don't believe me? Read "How my blog started the avalanche that buried presidential aide Tim Goeglein" by Nancy Nall Derringer in Slate today. Here is the link: http://www.slate.com/id/2185657/

I wonder how many people are going to fired ten, twenty years from now for plagiarizing other people's content (...and all the snotty, mean, vicious things they write on their own blogs or while commenting on other people's...). Seriously people, do not copy other people's stuff.

Social Media Best Practices

This morning, after returning from a BusinessWire event, I spent some time catching up on the news and reading my favorite blogs. A lot of the conversation in the PR world these days has to do with the mainstreaming of social networks and the impact they are having on traditional forms of communications. More and more companies are implementing programs that incorporate a social media component. And, increasingly, agencies are documenting their best practices and promoting their success stories.

One of the most succinct primers on the granular steps needed to develop social media content is the subject of my buddy Geoff Livingston's Now is Gone blog today. The main takeaway I have is that the basics of PR haven't changed at all- you must still learn about your audience before you open your mouth. It's ready, aim, fire- not the other way around...

TMI?

I just read a great blog post by Kyle Flaherty at Engage In PR. He isn't the only one talking about it, but his post struck a cord with me. There is vast amounts of information being generated from social media (blogs, twitters, events, wikis). It's overly time consuming to read and interact with it all.

We here are Strategic place a lot of emphasis on work-live balance for our staff. We feel strongly that we best serve our clients by not burning out the employees with 90 workweeks and back breaking scope creep. We are not a "smile and dial" agency that spams reporters with context-less emails. We focus hiring staff with long experience and a deep understanding of technology markets and putting them into a position whereby they can leverage their knowledge to provide the highest level counsel and most efficient execution for our clients.

However, the growth of social media implies that, not only is there more information outlets to monitor, but you have to interact with them in a meaningful, value added way. And...you must generated your own information and communicate it clearly.

Oh, and do your job too. Oh and maintain relationships with family and friends.

All this implies to me, at least, that there has to be a diminishing return to social media, as people's attention is limited after a certain level of interaction is achieved. Where that point is located is different for each person...but it's definitely there.

Lovely Link-y Goodness

Some links of note:

A popular, successful social community for IT professionals: http://www.ittoolbox.com

Corporatedealmaker.com debuts as stand-alone Web site : http://www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080207/FREE/89099387/1078/newsletter01

Forrester Research is out with a report that addresses the possible impact of a recession on budgets for social media initiatives: http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3idcbc5d3b3d8cd77104f087d7ef56ffb7

The Arketi Group has compiled a survey that provides data on how B-to-B media use Web 2.0, including how journalists get story ideas and how they use the Internet. Read the PDF here: http://www.arketi.com/pdfs/Arketi_Web_Watch_2007.pdf

What is Twitter?

Many of you may have heard of Twitter. It's a mini-blog type website that allows you to follow the activities of your friends in a highly abbreviated, quick way. Many people have integrated it into their larger social media efforts as a way to drive more traffic to their blog(s). I've decided to check it out and see how it works.

Here is my Twitter page: http://twitter.com/jmajka

In researching the site, I read a fantastic blog post by Darren Rowse on how to use Twitter. If you're interested in learning how to make the most of Twitter, I suggest you read Darren's post.

Blogging for Dollars?

My colleague Tarun pointed out an article from the Wall Street Journal showing how bloggers are using new services to generate advertising revenue. Personally, I'm not looking to generate any cash flow from this blog. I added Google AdWords to this fine blog mainly to see how it worked. So far, I've managed to "earn" 58 cents. Weeeeee.

For a well known blogger I can see how this might add up to real money. But for most people, ad revenues aren't going to add up to much.

Here is a quote from the WSJ article:

Many of the most widely used programs are adding features to allow users to customize the appearance and placement of ads on their sites. Some also are introducing newer money-making mediums such as audio and video ads.

"There's going to be a lot of new business models in 2008 that are geared toward more monetization," says Pete Blackshaw, executive vice president of strategic services for Nielsen Online, the Web analysis unit of the Nielsen Co.

Blog publishers could certainly use the help in making money. The vast majority of publishers make less than $10 or $20 a month through advertising, according to Internet-advertising experts. How much money is made through advertising on a site depends much on how much traffic a site gets, the trustworthiness of the content and how relevant the ads are to the visitors.

As for a business to business technology company, blogs are going to be part of the way that it communicates with its employees, customers, prospects, traditional media, analysts, other bloggers and other audiences. It's not going to be a source of revenue.

New Site to Me: Gooruze?

I spent far too much time today reading blogs in Google Reader. I find it endlessly fascinating how this new-ish medium (Social Media- in case you're not following) is impacting traditional PR and how it's not impacting it. During my reading, I saw a link to a site called Gooruze. I went a checked it out and decided to become a member (jmajka.gooruze.com).

Gooruze is a social networking site for marketing and PR professionals where they can interact, share advice and rank news, blogs, and other content. A very cool idea that I've seen executed in number of other verticals. I'm hoping that I'll find it as valuable as I hope.

Walt Mossberg Raises the Red Flag of Revolution

A colleague of mine pointed out to me an interesting blog post by Walt Mossberg this morning:

http://mossblog.allthingsd.com/20071021/free-my-phone/

A shortsighted and often just plain stupid federal government has allowed itself to be bullied and fooled by a handful of big wireless phone operators for decades now. And the result has been a mobile phone system that is the direct opposite of the PC model. It severely limits consumer choice, stifles innovation, crushes entrepreneurship, and has made the U.S. the laughingstock of the mobile-technology world, just as the cellphone is morphing into a powerful hand-held computer.

Up until the 1970s, when the federal government intervened, you weren’t allowed to buy your own landline phone, and companies weren’t able to innovate, on price or features, in making and selling phones to the public. All Americans were forced to rent clumsy phones made by a subsidiary of the monopoly phone company, AT&T, which claimed that, unless it controlled what was connected to its network, the network might suffer.

Well, the government pried that market open, and the wired phone network not only didn’t collapse, it became more useful and versatile, allowing, among other things, cheap connections to online data services.

I suspect that if the government, or some disruptive innovation, breaks the crippling power that the wireless carriers exert today, the free market will deliver a similar happy ending.

At the SIIA Changing Landscape seminar on mobility last month, D. P. Venkatesh pointed out that Apple is a odd choice to lead the anti-oligarchy charge. It's model is based on it owning the entire software stack to the exclusion of anyone else. Although, Apple just announced that they will eventually allow third party programs, this seems like too little to late. After all, my three year old PocketPC (on Verizon, widely acknowledged as the "worst" carrier in terms of openness) easily allows third party applications.

Now, switching it from one carrier to another might prove a challenge...

However, Walt's economic instincts are correct. More competition will bring more innovation, and greater value at lower prices. And you can bet that the carriers will fight tooth and nail to prevent that from happening...

More Proof for the Power of PR

As far as I'm concerned, the real utility of public relations is the simple act of getting a third party to vouch for your client and help validate his/her message to the audience. All the things that PR firms do boil down to this one simple act. Positioning, branding and purple cows, etc just increase the likelihood and/or persuasiveness of that validation.

There are any number of scientific studies showing how people tend to believe those perceived to be experts. Gartner, Forrester and any number of think tanks have whole businesses based on this insight.

Now it seems, people tend to be persuaded by mere gossip as well.

Study: Gossip Trumps Truth

People are influenced by gossip about others, even when it contradicts what they see with their own eyes, suggests a new study.

Past research has found that gossip—those juicy tidbits of supposed fact we share about a third party—serves many purposes, including strengthening social ties, spreading social norms and helping others avoid double-crossers and other risky partners.

Hearsay can be the most reliable source of information about situations with which you have no experience. But when you hear gossip that's incongruent with a person or incident you are familiar with, you'd be smart to throw that chitchat out the window in favor of your own direct knowledge, right?

The new study, published this week online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reveals individuals sometimes place so much stock in gossip that they accept it as true even if their own observations and experiences suggest otherwise.

I've read some interesting articles about how blogs are rated at the top of the trustworthy scale, along with analysts, scientists and reporters. This fact seemed a little out of whack to me, but after reading about the influence of gossip it seems to make more sense...

Respect My Authority!

Watch out people! My Technorati Authority number is now 6. Boo Yaah!

Since my credibility is now un-impeachable, earlier this morning I proclaimed the coming energy crisis to be over, even though crude oil prices are spiking up over $85 today.

I never thought I'd be proven correct so soon, but, woops, here is the proof:

Pentagon Promotes Space-Based Solar Power Effort

A new report from the Pentagon's National Security Space Office (NSSO) postulates that space-based solar-power platforms could begin fulfilling planetary demand for electricity by 2050. The report noted that while significant challenges remain, the technologies for making extraterrestrial relay stations a reality "are more executable than ever before and current technological vectors promise to further improve its viability."And then there's this jaw-dropper: "According to the NSSO's Space-Based Study Group, a single kilometer-wide band of geosynchronous earth orbit experiences enough solar flux in one year to nearly equal the amount of energy contained within all known recoverable conventional oil reserves on Earth today." (bold added)

Sweet.

This takes a bit of the sting out Da Bears horrific loss yesterday to the Minnesota Vikings. Da Bears gave up 311 yards rushing to the Vikes.

Yikes.

Busy Bee! And Alisher Usmanov...

I read a very interesting story on Slate this morning ("Civil Disobedience on the Web") and immediately thought I'd blog on the subject. I pulled up my blog in my trusty Firefox browser and realized I haven't posted since September 26. Gulp.

Definitely a violation of some sort of blogger code...my apologies to all. I've been working on three, count 'em, three, events that'll I'll tell you all about in the coming week or two, as well as working on a number of interesting new deals. On top of all that, I'm working on website redesign and editing video footage of our last event with the SIIA. Busy bee!

So anyway...due to the rather vicious and broad nature of the libel law in the UK, it's very easy for the well connected and rich to sue, and win, libel cases against the press. This state of affairs has started to experience some changes as bloggers have started to challenge some of London's less than savory billionaire immigrants, including one Alisher Usmanov, a bad, bad man from Uzbekistan.

The next case is more telling for the breadth of its reach and the greater uproar it entrained. It involves Uzbek-Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, No. 142 on Forbes' list of the world's richest people, who has acquired a stake in British soccer team Arsenal. Usmanov is one shady character: In the 1980s he was jailed for a variety of crimes, including fraud, but he was granted a full pardon—and reclassified as a Soviet political prisoner—upon Mikhail Gorbachev's assumption of the premiership.

Some bloggers wrote some not so nice things about Mr. Usmanov, who promtly sued...the ISP's that hosted the bloggers. Apparently, in the UK, hosting providers can be held liable for the speech of the people who use their service, as in the USA. These ISP's promptly caved and shut off the offending blogs. Uproar insued.

Read the whole article here: http://www.slate.com/id/2175579/pagenum/2/

"This is Not a Brothel"

It's the summer doldrums, but I want to share with you Tom Coates' post on the frustrations of being emailed mountains of press releases by crappy PR people.

"This Is Not A Brothel"

I just spent a hour reading through some of Tom's posts- very thoughtful and well written. He's obviously not a big fan of PR, and feels that it is borderline immoral. It's amazing to me how many people think PR is nothing more than sending out press releases, and that's it. I can tell that of all the work we do for our clients, maybe 8% is writing press releases. I can also say that PR agencies that cut corners and merely mass email a press release are wasting their clients' time and money, and soon go out of business. (Hopefully)

It's also amazing to me how many people confuse advertising and PR, not understanding the difference between paid and earned media. To my mind, PR is better than advertising is that a pitch as least has to pass through a screen of "bullshit" detectors, whether they be reporters or bloggers.