The Affari Edge Blog

Josh Hallet,  of <strong><a href=”http://www.hyku.com” target=”_blank”>Hyku</a></strong> and <strong><a href=”http://www.empircalpolk.com”target=”_blank”>Empircal Polk</a></strong>, has asked me to be a session leader for the 2007 <strong><a href=”http://www.blogorlando.com”target=”_blank”>BlogOrlando</a></strong>.

Now, unlike conferences you may have attended, BlogOrlando is specifically an <strong><em>un-conference</em></strong>.  The concept grew out of the realization that most people at trade shows, academic conferences, and industry gatherings learned a heck of a lot more from the Q&A sessions or just talking amongst themselves during the social time.  So why not take those good parts and make the entire conference like that??

<center><img src=”http://www.blogorlando.com/images/bo-nodate.gif” alt=”blogOrlando” border=0/></center>

So, what is BlogOrlando, you ask?  Well…

<blockquote>Hyku, in partnership with Rollins College will host the second edition of this FREE event that is open to bloggers and non-bloggers alike from Florida and anywhere else. We hope to bring together a good cross-section of folks to discuss blogging, podcasting, public relations, social media, citizen’s journalism and other related topics. In addition to the Friday event we planned some outings at the local theme parks over the weekend. The event was as much a social/family gathering as it is a ‘work’ gathering.</blockquote>

I attended the <strong><a href=”http://www.stateofsunshine.com/2006/09/21/heading-to-blogorlando-tomorrow/” target=”_blank”>first BlogOrlando last fall</a></strong>, and learned a great deal.  In fact, it helped spur me to move from Blogger to my own domain and use WordPress.

If you have even the smallest interest in social media - especially blogging - then you should make the trek to Olrando for the day.  There are some great people leading various sessions, including bloggers who I read every day.  From politics to media to blogging for business to second life, BlogOrlando has something for just about everyone.

<center><img src=”http://www.blogorlando.com/images/BlogOrlando_BeThere.gif” alt=”blogOrlando” border=0/></center>

I’ll be there.  Will you?

We at Affari Edge are interested in starting a Tampa Bay chapter of the Social Media Club:

Social Media Club is being organized for the purpose of sharing best practices, establishing ethics and standards, and promoting media literacy around the emerging area of Social Media. This is the beginning of a global conversation about building an organization and a community where the many diverse groups of people who care about social media can come together to discover, connect, share, and learn.

 Social Media Club will bring together journalists, publishers, communications professionals, artists, amateur media creators, citizen journalists, teachers, students, tool makers, and other interested collaboraters. Essentially the people who create and consume media who have an interest in seeing the ‘media industry’ evolve for everyone’s benefit. We are more than just USERS, we are the reason the tools exist - we are the people who communicate our thoughts and ideas near and far. Join us and let’s shape the future together!

Anyone intersted in the Social Media Club should contact me (Jim Johnson) via email: jjohnson {at} affariedge {dot} com.

We’ll be contacting others in the community to set up the first interest meeting in the next few weeks.  Stay tuned.

Constantin Basturea, Director of New Media Strategies at Converseon and author of PR Meets the WWW, one of the blogs in my feed, has a significant compilation of public relations and communicaitons blogs, containing674 feeds.  I don’t read all 674 of them, but I read quite a few on a daily basis.  I have found them helpful as I further develop my public relations skills, and informative about what is going on in the PR industry.

However, public relations is not the only industry with a significant number of blogs.

No matter what industry you are in, there are going to be bloggers writing about it.  Some of these blogs could even be your competitors! Use sites like Technorati to search for blogs on your industry and make a habit of reading them.  Even if you aren’t blogging yourself, or your company has not started doing it, you will find your industry blogs as important as reading trade publications or business periodicals.

BusinessWeek Online posted an article in advance of the April 9th magazine with the title “Don’t Quit Your Day Job, Podcasters”.

So, once again, something we don’t understand we mock? The traditional media never takes the time to understand why the “little people” embrace a new voice in the wilderness.

The fact is, most podcasters do produce shows while maintaining a day job. Yours truly not only produces podcasts professionally, but I promote other companies using various web technologies, I service computers and networks, and currently writing a book and kit about podcasting for small businesses!

Quoting from their own article;

While there has been an explosion of shows over the past couple of years, offering everything from advice on how to manage your money to Italian lessons, podcasting’s business prospects are just developing. The share of Americans who listen to audio downloads from the Web has grown only slightly in the past year, to 13% from 11%, according to a survey released last month by Edison Media Research. Those listeners increasingly are crowding around the most popular podcasts. But a lack of standards for placing podcast ads or measuring audiences has hobbled ad spending, which only hit $80 million last year.”

So, in the same article where they slam the content, and the producers, they admit that a measly 2% growth resulted in $80 million in revenue, for a few thousand “indie” shows? Seems like someone should revisit 5th grade math! This is an amazing phenomenon! 2% growth shows revenue increase of over $30 million in one year?

A big factor in how revenue is tracked in podcasting is how many companies produce podcasts for advertising (like ESP and Affari Edge!) vs. how many shows are “indie” content, hobbiests, or, the larger slice, companies producing podcast content for self-promotion or training? Would it surprise you to learn that less than 5% of podcasts are produced with revenue from ads as their main reason for existence?

I can tell you that this is a labor of love for the vast majority of producers, myself included. However, the trend shows VAST growth in households who know what a podcast is, and have been exposed to one in the last year.

Even the author of the study from the Edison Media Research center, Tom Webster, author of “New Podcasting Statistics - Is The Glass Half-Full, or Half-Empty?” had this to say on their site:

Certainly, given the impressive growth in awareness of the term “podcast,” one might have expected more than a two percentage point increase in the behavior. On the other hand, this is 13% of America we are talking about–and while I am not…yet…at liberty to release the percentage of Americans this year who subscribe to Satellite Radio, it is pretty close. So, on the one hand, growth is relatively small, but on the other, podcasting has achieved a similar penetration to Satellite Radio, without the benefit of a honkin’ big marketing campaign, Howard Stern, or Oprah.”

I would think that BusinessWeek should look a little more closely at the numbers before snubbing 50,000 potential subscribers, audience members in the millions, and colleagues in the industry.

The fact is, those of us who produce podcasts for profit, also produce many more for fun, for free, or for a free voice in the new media.

The numbers are growing rapidly, as people learn they don’t need an mp3 player, or Ipod to hear a podcast, and will likely see a change in how they “timeshift” their entertainment, news, music, and yes, even their magazines. RSS changed the world, and shows little sign of slowing down.

The irony is, when I go to the article to read in full on BusinessWeek, they have a full-screen, intrusive pop-up style ad running on the page, blocking my view (which rotates between sponsors) and is more than a little annoying. Geesh, when will they learn?

For Immediate Release

Affari Edge Announces
Grant Program for Non-Profits:
$5,000 to Enter Social Media

TAMPA, Florida – Affari Edge, a local authority on using social media, announced today a grant for Tampa Bay area non-profit organizations, offering up to $5,000 in social media consulting and training services. “Giving back to the community is a core principle at Affari Edge,” said Dave Sizemore, one of two partners at Affari. “Because of our expertise with social media, we felt we could help a local organization explore this new technology.”

Social media is a name attributed to a collection of technologies including but not limited to blogs, podcasts, virtual communities, wikis, and virtual worlds that enable people to communicate with each other online in ways that mirror offline interpersonal interaction. Prominent examples of social media also include sites such as MySpace, Flickr, Twitter, Wikipedia, Digg, and many more.

“It’s a natural extension of any organization’s marketing and public relations efforts,” said Wendy Robbins, the second partner with Affari Edge. “By using these new technologies, we can help any organization build a close-knit community.”

Applications will be accepted until May 15, 2007 and will be judged based on a number of criteria.  More information is available on the Affari Blog on the Affari Edge website.

Affari Edge is a full-service advertising agency offering a comprehensive range of advertising and public relations services. Affari Edge is made up of creative gurus, with extensive business experience, from small business ownership to leading different aspects of some of the largest empires in corporate America. The mix of business background with creative expertise leads to superior results. Affari means business.

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At the end of a recent blog post by Brett McMurphy, who covers the University of South Florida sports for the Tampa Tribune, was the following paragraph:

I’ve been told by the higher ups we’re doing away with the comments portion of the blog. Instead, you can go to the Forum: Talk Bulls link at the top of this page. We’ve created the Forum as a place for Bulls fans to gather and discuss various topics.

A quick peek a the TBO.com Bulls forum shows very little activity, except for recently. One poster asked why the switch to the forum. Brett posted the official reason:

“While we’ve generated a very good amount of traffic to the sports blogs, and have seen a spike in the number of comments being posted, we’ve begun to migrate the discussion away from the blogs and into our TBO Discussion Forums.

We encourage the interactivity, but this is a site-wide attempt (not just Sports) to make our Forums the gathering place for a lot of the back-and-forth discussion we’re seeing in the blogs. The hope is that the users themselves will initiate a lot of the discussion, rather than just reacting to your blog posts.”

Ah. Well, there is one problem. You see, USF fans have three major discussion forums already:

• The Bulls Pen - An independent website owned by USF alumn Brad Meyer.
• USFNation - Part of the Scout.com network.
• USFBullsEye.com - Part of the Rivals.com network.

These are in addition to the forums on media sites like ESPN, CBS, and CSTV

On many of these sites, fans talk about what Brett (and other Tampa Tribune reporters/columnists) write about USF. So why does TBO.com feel the need to create yet another message board?

Yes, I know - blogs and forums are both social media. By using forums, TBO.com is trying to fit into the new communications model. For this, they are to be commended. They are doing something that their main competitor, the St. Petersburg Times, is not doing.

However, I don’t believe substituting forums for blog comments is the right way to go.

Forums are great when there are a number of die-hard posters willing to engage in dialogue about a topic. That’s why the USF forums listed above do so well. They each have a siginificant number of Bulls fans postingon a large range of topics every day. The media-based forums don’t draw the same number or intensity of fans.

That being said, why not marry blog comments with forums? If a TBO.com blog generates a large response via comments, the blogger (be it McMurphy or any of the other Trib bloggers) should shift the discussion to the forum by starting and maintaining a thread there. Then s/he could simply post a blog entry that asks readers to join the discussion on the forum. TBO.com bloggers could even “break” stories on their forum, and drive traffic with a blog post indicating “breaking news on the … forum.” There are a number of ways that forums can be used that will work far better than saying “Want to comment? Go to our fourm and…”

TBO.com needs to understand that it’s not about forcing their readers into avenues that “Mother Trib” (as Steve Otto calls it) wants. It’s about giving the readers as many options to communicate as possible. It’s far easier to comment at the bottom of the post than to find a link to the forum, register for the forum (or log in), find the thread on which they want to share their thoughts (or start a new post), and then comment. One step is replaced by four.

As an avid reader of several TBO.com blogs, I hope they reconsider this decision.

A lot has been written in the political blogosphere about this video on YouTube. The MSM picked up on the controversy because it was posted anonymously. And it’s obvious that the person who created, Phil de Vellis, it would have preferred to remain anonymous. Huffington Post was able to get the scoop (take that mainstream media!). He subsequently quit his job and posted his reasons on HuffPost.Ah, but it won’t stop there. Consider this from a Wired article:

The video’s success has fired up a new round of debate about the impact of federal regulators’ decision a year ago to exclude unpaid online political activity from the detailed disclosure requirements that apply to political advertising in traditional media.

…

At the time, the decision was widely hailed by editorial writers and bloggers as a free speech victory for the lone digital pamphleteer. But some longtime politicos worried that the ruling would carve open a loophole through which large donors could fund stealth guerrilla campaigns to deceptively influence people.

But online political attacks are only a part of a much larger issue. In the future, it won’t be just politicians who are attacked. Companies could see attacks in much the same way. Jim Horton at Online Public Relations thinks so:

Corporations are next. It doesn’t take a great effort anymore to produce a video. The person who did this Anti-Hillary ad claimed that he finished it on a weekend at home. If that is the case, what is to stop any group from attacking a corporation and its leadership for their environmental policies or wages or health care? It is a matter of time before it happens.

The anti-Hillary video was viewed a million times before its creator confessed to producing it. He could have remained silent and continued on with his business. I suspect that more will do that so they don’t get fired from their jobs. Corporations in the news should monitor YouTube as a matter of course along with news and blog scans.

Some of these attacks are already out there. One attack on Sony’s Play Station 3 - “How Your Killed Your Brand” - is a great example of this. JetBlueHostage.com is another. There are countless more.

Some companies are trying to be proactive. Seth Godin pointed out that makers of Splenda were registering hundreds of domains that could be used as attack sites (such as SplendaKills.com or VictimsOfSplenda.com). But it’s not always enough.

Consider this post by Sterling Hager at AgencyNext:

This is the main website homepage of a company called Royal Dutch Shell, plc. Note the url: http://www.shell.com/. Note, too, there are no apparent blog offerings at this site.

Now here’s a blog entitled Royal Dutch Shell plc. which can be found at http://royaldutchshell.com/. Is this a Shell corporate blog? Not hardly. Click on that picture of a distinguished looking Mr. Alfred Donovan at the top of his blog and you’re taken to a June, 2005, Wall Street Journal piece which describes the then-88-year-old Mr. Donovan and his long-standing beef with Shell.

Imagine if Mr. Donovan were, instead, a large organization such a Greenpeace or National Resources Defense Council. The next form of “protest” will very well take place on line. And companies will be hard pressed to stop it from happening.

Is there a way out?

It might be flip to say “if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em.” But that might be one possible avenue. Cleary Shell will never be able to pay Alfred Donovan for the rights to his domain. They might have a chance at CyberSquatting - but only because of existing provisions with most countries and ICANN.

But what happens when they can’t find their next attacker? Anonymity is cheap and easy these days. Lawyers can’t sue someone they can’t find.

Perhaps the only way to control the online dialogue is to be a very active player. Counteract protesters and attackers by being their first, with more information. Be candid about their attacks, provide transparency whenever possible (without divulging trade secrets, for example). The general public understands that some protesters can be wind bags… but if the only thing they are hearing are the attackers - they won’t know the whole story.

The iceberg’s tip has been seen. Just how big is this one?