This is George Carlin's classic take on football and baseball. Here's the link for the feed readers: George Carlin - football verses baseball.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YphEUa5LPjM]

I just found out this morning that a client I work with answered their social phone for the first time a few days ago. They have been monitoring keywords in Twitter via Tweetscan's (UPDATE: he used Summize, not Tweetscan) RSS feeds and when a customer complained about a particular product, the listening employee responded (even though the product had nothing to do with what he does at the company.) That response got an answer to the frustrated customer and the customer had the delight of getting a question/frustration dealt with that he didn't expect an answer on. The customer came back around in Twitter and said thanks to the client. He noted that he was impressed, and frankly, a little surprised that they were listening and responded.

This is just another case of a ringing social phone that would have gone unanswered were it not for someone listening to it. Companies put significant amounts of money into the technology, personnel, and training for inbound customer service calls, but most companies are not even thinking about the unbound social calls that are being made for the world to see but going unanswered. Your social phone is probably ringing. Are you going to answer it?

I think nine out of ten commercials on the radio are really bad. It's like there are a handful of commercial models and advertisers just plug their product into that commercial template. Here are the ones I seem to hear on a regular basis:

• The Endorsement: Someone (celebrity or not) talks about how great the product/service is.
• The Conversation: Two or three people having an overly informative (and very fake sounding) conversation about a product/service.
• The "We're Awesome": This is the standard commercial where the announcer talks about how the product/service is the best one you can get. They think they're awesome and they're going to tell you why they think they're awesome and why you should think they're awesome.
• The Owner: The owner/founder/president of the company talks about the product/service. This one is really a variation of the "we're awesome" commercial, just from the owner/founder/president's own mouth.

I'm sure there are more radio commercial templates but these are the few that come to mind. Maybe Chris can give me more...he's in that business. What I have noticed more and more is the inclusion of the company's website in radio commercials. Rather than repeating the company phone number numerous times in the 30 seconds, they repeat the website address. Strategically, that's a great move. It's easier to remember a website address than a ten digit phone number.

I'm not sure how many people actually visit a website after they hear it on a radio commercial and I'm not going to get into whether or not I think that's an effective use of marketing dollars (I think it depends on a lot of factors actually.) My concern today is that there are a lot of ads pushing people to websites that are just really bad and conceivable to more harm than good and therefore undermining the time and money that went into the original ad.

A bad website is like pornography. You might not be able to define it, but you know it when you see it. Even the most novice Internet user gets a sense of the site within seconds and in under a minute has formed a full fledged opinion on the site and the company the site represents. In many cases a radio commercial will simply direct you to the front page of a company's website. In general that's a terrible place to send people because every front page tries to cram as much information as possible. Instead, the commercial should send you to a page designed solely for that commercial, so when you visit the page the information is completely targeted to what hooked you into visiting in the first place.

Also, don't send the listeners to a subpage within the company website. Buy a specific domain name just for advertisement. It cost you less than $10 to do it. For instance, I noticed recently that Jet Blue isn't sending people to JetBlue.com in their new ads, rather they're sending them to HappyJetting.com. Sure, Jet Blue could have advertised something like "Visit us at JetBlue.com/HappyJetting" but it just makes more sense to create a focused space dedicated to the new promotion entirely.

The bottom line:

1. Think twice about where you send people in your radio commercials.
2. Ask some impartial people if they think you have a bad website. If so, change it.
3. Get a highly focused webpage(s) with a unique domain name is too easy to do and may very well make all the difference in the success of a radio campaign.

I have two daughters and if we had a fish that died I expect we would see a similar ceremony at our house. This was pretty cute.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=491KMo-Ckg8]

Here's the link for the feed readers: Lucky's Funeral

Over the weekend I finally did something I've been meaning to do for a while now, which was to organize my Google Reader feeds. The problem I had was that I was trying to follow over 50 blogs and other miscellaneous feeds but there was no organization to it. Some feeds were much more important to me than others but I hadn't made it easy on myself to get to the preferred feeds quickly. I've known for some time that Google Reader allows you to create folders so it was time to give it a shot. I created the following for my use:

• Top 5 - The top five blogs I read to stay aware of what's going on in new media marketing. These are Seth Godin's blog, Mashable, TechCrunch, TechMeme, and Mitch Joel's Six Pixels blog.
• Friends - Blogs that my friends write.
• My Stuff - Anything I do that has an RSS feed.
• Clients - Blogs and anything else I'm monitoring for clients including some Technorati feeds and Tweetscan feeds.
• Everything Else - Catchall for anything I want to check in with from time to time.

So far it's been great. I find myself using Reader more now than before. A nice little surprise for me was that Google will aggregate all the feeds from a single folder so I can quickly see what's new from my Friends blogs for instance. I should have done this a while back but I'm glad it's set up now!

I'm always interested in the latest social media stats that come. So is my friend Aaron Linne. Aaron pulled some stats together for a meeting at his company recently. There's great info here if you haven't seen any social media stats in a while.

[youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=M-nWG2Mc56A]

David Alston is the VP of Marketing of Radian6, a social media monitoring company based in Canada. David recently commented on my blog post about social media and customer service. Through that comment we struck up a conversation in Twitter which led to David's gracious acceptance of my interview request. The full Q&A is below.

One thing to note here before the interview is that David's interaction with me though a comment on this blog is exactly what all marketing people should be doing. There are three camps that marketers are in, but only one where we all should be:

1. Some marketers don't monitor what people are saying about their company or topics related to their industry.
2. Other marketers are monitoring the discussions but aren't joining the conversations. This is better than the first camp because at least they'll know when something is said about them, but it's a very reactive posture as well. The monitoring seems more akin to just keeping an eye on social media to put a fire out rather than to serve to expand awareness of the company proactively. Monitoring potential fires is one thing, it's just not the whole thing when it comes to social media monitoring.
3. A few marketers, like David, are raising awareness of their company by finding the conversations they wouldn't otherwise know about and influencing people who wouldn't otherwise know about them.

So consider this a case in point for the right way to do not just monitor social media, but to engage it as well. Here's the interview with David...

MicroExplosion: Do you think companies are simply not monitoring their brand at all (meaning across all media...traditional and new) or is it more a neglect to pay attention to social media only?

David: Well, if you look at the 1000ís of companies that have been using traditional media monitoring companies (TV, print, radio) I would have to say that itís probably more of an awareness thing. For example, if a company decision maker didnít read the newspaper, watch TV or listen to the radio he/she probably wouldnít consider monitoring traditional media channels all that necessary. The same goes for social media (blogs, online video and images, forums, opinion sites, micromedia). Itís usually when a company decides to dip its toe into social media from a corporate or personal level that the need finally crystallizes. Conversations about brands and issues are happening all the time online in social media with or without brand owners. Its probably best to be at least aware of these so engagement can be considered.

MicroExplosion: In large companies do you find that any particular departments are more interested in your services than others? For instance, is the corporate communications office more interested in social media monitoring than the marketing department or vice versa?

David: Each department has a different reason to be monitoring social media.

• Public relations ñ crises breaking online, monitoring effective of outreach campaigns
• Marketing ñ tracking brand voice vs. competitors, tracking a marketing campaignís effectiveness, looking for possible trends, understanding the most influential sites to partner with or advertise on, discover competitor initiatives or positioning
• Customer Care ñ discover customer complaints and reach out, help with those clients requiring how-to assistance
• Sales ñ discover potential leads based on posts that declare ìa needî, respond with offers of assistance for clients of competitors having difficulty
• Legal ñ uncover potential misuse of copyrights or patents, stay on top of any issues regarding inappropriate communications from an SEC perspective
• HR ñ discover potential employee candidates based on the expertise they are demonstrating or the comments they make about looking for work in a specific area of expertise/location
• Business Development ñ uncover potential channel partners

MicroExplosion: You mentioned in a comment on my blog that companies should "answer the social phone." I think that's a great phrase. Do you see organizations viewing this new task of social phone answering as something else to put on employee(s) full plates or are they carving out time and/or hiring new personnel to do this?

David: It is still early in the game for many companies deciding where the ìsocial phoneî should be primarily answered. The key thing would be at least assigning it to someone as a start. This could be someone in PR, marketing or customer care. Once a company gets a feel for the types of ìsocial web callsî coming in and the volume they could better assess the best fit for this role within their company. Radian6 is working with leading companies now to help determine the best approach for them and how our platform can best serve each of their own unique situations.

MicroExplosion: How do you recommend a client respond if they have found their brand to be unfavorably mentioned in a blog, podcast, or some other social medium?

David: I guess it entirely depends on what is said, who is saying it, and whether or not the company has developed a relationship with that individual or with the community that individual belongs to. Generally I would say that the response needs to match up with the companyís brand promise for all other communications with clients and potential clients. Responding quickly in an appropriate way can also show that you care to listen and you want to help out. Not only will this buy a company credibility with the person who posted but it will also with those who read this person or are part of his/her network. In the end its about developing and maintaining relationships with people.

MicroExplosion: What does Radian6 do for a company that Google Alerts doesn't?

David: Certainly most people usually start out this way. It can at least give them a snippet of whatís out there involving their brand. Our clients generally tell us that Google Alerts donít get them the entire coverage they need across all social media types, donít allow them to understand which posts and sites to pay more attention to, and canít show them which trends are happening. They also find that Google Alerts donít always get delivered in a timely way ñ which is important if you plan on engaging on a post with a majority of commenting and viewership happening in the first two days.

Our solution covers all types of social media (not just blogs) and delivers findings in real-time as discovered. It tracks conversational dynamics on each post (viewership, total comments, total unique commenters, and calculated engagement) which enables sorting ability to zoom in on the most viral conversations. With all of the posts on a topic in one place, users can then run ad hoc analysis charts and graphs based on keywords. Analysis capabilities like this enables a client to see trends and potential issues (ex. ìforest for the treesî). Finally we can also determine the top influential sites on a topic based on a user-defined formula that includes conversational dynamics as well as total on-topic posts and on-topic inbound linking. Determining influencers allows a client to focus their engagement and outreach efforts for the best ROI.

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David, thanks for the interview. You provided some great insights here. Check out the Radian6 website to learn more about their company and services.

I am going to a wedding this weekend and this video reminded me what the simple addition of the word "wedding" does to the price of just about anything. There are regular pictures and then wedding pictures. There are regular cakes and then there are wedding cakes. There are regular flowers and then, well...you get the point.

Link for the feed readers: Wedding flowers

For some reason I forgot to post about our last episode of The New Mediology about online video. We talked about everything from the new Netflix set top box and Hulu to infamous YouTube videos like the one that put the band OK Go on the map.

Today our most recent episode of The New Mediology is available about Twitter. Nathan and I covered a lot of ground in this episode. We disagreed a bit about whether Twitter is a social network or social media. I also said Adam Curry a Twitter Spammer. In all the tweets I've seen from him he's only talking about the a new podcast and ads nothing else of value to Twitter...and in my book that's spam.

As the Internet continues to both evolve and take further root in our culture there are a few things you might still be doing that simply aren't required anymore (but I still see and/or hear them...hence this post.) In the same way that most everyone seems to have gotten the email that you don't say "world wide web" anymore, there are a few other things you may want to consider checking too. Here are three things you do starting today...

1. Drop the WWW. That's it. Just drop it. You don't need to tell people to visit your site at www.yoursite.com anymore. Just say, "check out yoursite.com" and that's all they need. Most browsers now can handle the URL without the www...so drop it. Besides, isn't it a lot easier to say a URL without actually saying WWW first? It's just too much of a verbal speed bump.

2. Drop the "online" from your URL. I saw this on a truck the other day on the highway. I don't remember the company name but let's say it was XYZ Trucking. The URL on the truck was XYZOnline.com. Do they really need to say "online" anymore? The point here is that an online presence is assumed these days and once people see a .com, .org, .tv, etc. they'll figure out that you're talking about a website. XYZTrucking.com would be a much better URL for the trucking company.

Link for the feed readers: The Ninja Explains Online Video

Becky is a marketing strategist for a large company here in Nashville. One evening she was planning some snacks for an evening with friends when her search for a snack led her to purchase a book she didn't know she wanted. Here's the email Becky sent to her director the next day:

"I Googled Chili's because I wanted to find out how much it would cost to get chips and salsa to go. When I Googled Chili's, this link came up that said "Brand Autopsy: Would you miss Chili's?" That intrigued me, so I clicked on it and found the blog of a marketing guy who used to work for Starbucks and Whole Foods. He, in turn, raved about this new book that is all about marketing and social networks. I thought it might be something that our whole team would benefit from. Isn't it ironic that I was looking for chips and salsa and found a marketing book? But it hit the right audience at the right time!"

I really like this story at a number of different levels because:

• It shows the power and influence of blogs even in the most unlikely of connections.
• It reminds me that people trust blogs that seem trustworthy.
• It reminds me that your target audience cannot be segmented so neatly all the time because Becky the marketer wasn't looking for a book but she found one and bought it (and will likely buy one for the entire marketing team at the company) when she was Becky the snack shopper.
• It reminds me of the power of a Google search and how blogs could make (or break) the positioning of your brand.

The book Becky found was called "Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed By Social Technologies" by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. I'm reading this book now too but I found out about it through Twitter via Jeremiah Owyang.

I'm keenly aware of the irony here (and also the affirmation of the power and influence of social media) that a book called Groundswell benefited from the groundswell in at least two cases I can point to directly (mine and Becky's) and I'm sure countless others. So the question is, what are you waiting for if you're not getting in yet? Don't fight the groundswell.

I was challenged recently to think about customer service representatives as part of an organization's social media response and tracking team. I had never thought of using customer service reps to keep tabs on blogs, Google Alerts, and any other social media that may be talking about an organization but it really makes sense. After all, customer service reps serve as a front line for companies already and they know the ins and outs of the company about as well as anyone, so why not pull a rep or two aside for social media monitoring?

What if a company started allowing its customer service reps (or any other employees for that matter) to be proactive in engaging prosumers? Why not monitor and respond to complaints voiced in Twitter? Why not leave a comment of thanks from a blog post that had something nice to say about your product or service or company? Why not leave a video response to a YouTube video that discussed your product? Why not join a social network group or entire social network that was dedicated for (or against) your organization? Why not have your reps start a blog on the company website?

The new world of customer service is going to be proactive engagement unlike what the average customer service representative is paid to do today. It's going to require as much trust from the company as they have in their reps now but with more freedom. It's going require the legal department relaxing just a bit. It's going to require the marketing department working closer with the customer service department. It's going to require customer service being a part of your social media training. It's going to require rethinking the roles of marketing, public relations, and customer service. Perhaps a "customer relations department" is more in order. Whatever it may be, it's going to change

Catalyst is a nationally recognized church leadership conference that has been running strong for eight years now. Their upcoming conference is October 8-10 in Atlanta and will include speakers like Andy Stanley, Seth Godin, Jim Collins, Franklin Graham, and Dave Ramsey. Brad Lomenick is the executive director of Catalyst and was kind enough to let me interview him recently. Here is the full, unedited interview.

MicroExplosion: Catalyst positions itself with a three fold focus on learning, worship, and creativity. If you had to choose one of the three to be successful to the detriment of the other two, which would you choose for the attendees?

Brad: That is a tough question, since we have designed the experience of Catalyst to be multi-dimensional and we believe that is why the Catalyst experience is a unique one. Our goal is to create an incredible experience that allows everyone to find a connection. However, if we had to have only one, it would be the learning component- the speakers and great content.

MicroExplosion: Are social justice discussions among churches today hype or help? In other words, has the emergence of social justice among churches become the cool thing to talk about or do you think there's a real awakening happening?

Brad: Well, regardless of how one views social justice, it is a core component of what we as Believers and the global Church should be focused on. The Scriptures, and specifically the Gospels, are very clear on our role in taking care of the poor, the orphaned, the widows, the hungry, and the sick. It is very interesting how social justice has become the cool thing to talk about in the last couple of years. Reality is, to answer your question, secular culture right now is in many ways leading the charge on social justice issues, when ultimately the Church should be leading in this area. The church in general has definitely awakened to these issues lately, but we still have a long way to go. But people want to always say it is one or the other- either social justice or evangelism/discipleship. I would propose it is both. Both have to exist. I believe the early Church was very clear on being dually focused on evangelism/discipleship along with acts of charity and compassion.

MicroExplosion: I'm a huge Seth Godin but know he's not a leader within a church or Christian organization. What do you hope attendees will learn from him at Catalyst?

Brad: Since we started Catalyst, we have always welcomed leaders from the business world to come and present to our audience of leaders in the church. It is important as leaders in the church that we learn from all different facets of our culture- business, entertainment, media, the arts, government, and most definitely from within the church. We believe that part of the Catalyst draw is the inclusion of business speakers who bring a different perspective- every year we bring in the best and brightest from business and leadership, and Seth is right at the top. His blog is one of the most well read in the world, and he has been a thought leader in marketing and communications for the last 15 years. He has a ton to offer the Church and leaders in the Church, specifically as it relates to how we position, platform, and ultimately deliver our product, which is the Good News of Jesus. Not only that, he can provide keen insights on what it takes to create and maintain a great brand, and how to stand out in a culture where this is so much competing for our time, energy, and our focus.

MicroExplosion: Have you received any negative reactions to the inclusion of William Paul Young as a speaker since Mark Driscoll has come out so strongly against The Shack? If so, how is Catalyst responding?

Brad: Very few reactions one way or the other, whether positive or negative. We will be interviewing William Paul Young at Catalyst, and should be interesting. Again, our vision for Catalyst has always been that we ìchallenge the processî from all angles, and although some may have certain criticisms of the book, we still feel like there are things that we as leaders can learn from hearing the story of the explosion of popularity of this book as well as the reason behind it- specifically as it relates to the testimony and personal journey of William Young.

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Brad, thanks for taking the time to answer these questions. For more on the Catalyst conference check out their website and the Catalyst blog.