I want to commend the folks at the Search Marketing Expo (Third Door Media) for putting on a great show about search and search as it relates to social media. The Javits Center has never felt so much like home as it did this week at SMX East which I attended with my colleagues John Lee and Deanna Jiminez.

There were many great speakers and presenters. Dan Morris (Brafton), Maile Ohye (Google) and Eric Ward (EricWard.com) really stand out in my mind as I write this blog entry.

As a student of search, as part of my role in Bringing it to Digital here at Flightpath, I take away some core themes that I wanted to share with the Digital Insight Blog Community:

1.    Like usability before it, Search is very much about putting yourself in your target’s shoes. This begins with personas and serious keyword discovery. Unless you are running the Hairclub for Men (No offense to Sy Sperling), remember that you are not your own client. So optimize for terms the client personas are likely to use.

2.    Have a strategy that seeks to meet some long term goals. Search (and Social Media) goals are not necessarily standards yet, so take time to "agree to agree" on what you are trying to accomplish so you can come up with ways to measure.

3.    Be prepared to resource appropriately to manage and monitor. Jon Fox and I like to poke a little fun at our former President’s “Trust but Verify” slogan but I think it is clear that it is a wise philosophy to apply to Search. I can recall attending conferences in the '90's when Jakob Nielsen was preaching website "gardening"; now one must be equally, if not more vigilant, with SEO and SEM.

As my frienemy David Berkowitz said at the closing session of the conference, there are beaucoup tools out there with all kinds of crazy names to help execute and measure search campaigns, but I believe these three things must come first before you consider which cool tool like Google Webmaster tools, Facebook Lexicon or Wordtracker to use. Who knows? Pretty soon all of us may end up on Twitterholic.

For more on the conference, John Lee and I were tweeting from the event via @flightpathny with the hash tag #smx.  I saw many other great tweets from the event as well, so I encourage you to check it out.

And, no, I’m not a client of Hair Club for Men….yet. 

PS – Special thanks to Katie Gausephol for loaning me some charge for my blackberry so I could use twitterberry :) from the sessions. Sounds like I am some kind of twitterholic, doesn’t it :)  

From the Cin Chili Website: Hello Cindy, my name is SPC Stoner and I never go into combat without my Cin Chili! Thank you for the packages. Good to know people still remember us. See you at the Chili fest when I get home! Thanks.

Last month I attended the Food Marketing Institute’s Seminar on Consumer Affairs, Communications & Social Responsibility in Baltimore. Not surprisingly, there was a lot of talk about websites and social media from luminaries such as Phil Lempert, expect more on that in my blog soon, but what I really want to highlight in this post is the Social Responsibility angle.

Lane Bailey, President of Global Public Affairs from GolinHarris shared some very interesting statistics and ideas about trends in corporate responsibility, especially for the food and beverage industry.  74% of people surveyed by GolinHarris indicated that they felt strongly Corporate Responsibility should be a high priority for business.

So even in this rough economy (or perhaps because of it) people expect more from companies in the community. This fits in so well with the “altruistic impulse” to participate in groups on line discussed by Li and Bernoff in Groundswell (p.61).

Today, during my routine daily linkedin searching, I came across a company associated with one of my linkedin groups, “Food Events, Festivals and Sponsorship”, that is doing some good for our brothers and sisters in the Armed Forces protecting us everyday: Cin Chili. Through the web you can send chili care packages to a loved one in the service: for free! 

I was particularly touched by this because as it turns out, today (I learned through a facebook message), one of my Basic Training Battle Buddies is on his way to Alaska so I’m going to send him a Cin Chili care package. That should help him stay warm.

I’m very proud of Keith Colbert (pictured here with his lovely wife Karen) who has been in the service since 1992 when we ate MREs together in the foothills of Ft. Sill, Oklahoma as trainees. Now he is a First Sgt. if not a Command Sgt. Major (correct me if I’m wrong Keith after you get off the boat at Dutch Harbor, Alaska :).

There’s a streak of brilliance in what Cin Chili is doing. If you’ve ever eaten an MRE you know they taste better with a little hot sauce. I can recall trading the small bottles of Tabasco the way prisoners use cigarettes as capital when I was in the field.  So it’s an excellent place for the Cin Chili brand to be sampled.Here is what they are doing (www.cinchili.com/ambassador.html):

But Cin Chili goes a step beyond just sending the care package by sharing a small piece of their lives through the web. Spc Stoner wrote: “Good to know people still remember us.” Need I say more to explain the power of the gesture?It’s not even 5 minutes of fame but it’s a warm stomach and a nice thought we all can appreciate as a community which is what the web is great for. More importantly, we can all share the moment. It’s great to see the photos and read the clips from the soldiers.

We should expect to see more and more of this kind of sharing through the web and especially through social media. We should also see more of this kind of corporate responsibility around food, because food is about family and friends. The smell of food reminds us of good times with good people; and heck, what better than a little chili to warm a homesick soldiers soul – even if he or she is in Iraq.

It’s also a good way to create fans of your brand. I will certainly be telling everyone about this program. And if you look at the caption with the picture Sgt. Kyker of the 345^th Infantry, it tells us that he and his troops will be spreading the word too when he says: “We are enjoying the diversion from our "Job" as Cin Chili spokesmen.”

Thanks to all the soldiers.

I salute Cin Chili, and its leadership for taking corporate responsibility seriously here and for spicing things up for the troops. I guess a little chilli goes a long way. And I’ll finish it like I started with an Oklahoma OOOOOSHAAA!

PS - If you are interested in supporting our troops and vets through your regular shopping routine or if you are a business looking to get involved in this kind of corporate responsibility, I encourage you to check out: www.beyondtribute.com as well.

PPS – Keith, let me know if you can really see Russia when you get there.

Note: We try to keep topics timely here at the Digital Insight Blog. This blog was lost in the archives prior to my family vacation but several people have been asking us about the difference between Facebook Group Pages and Fan Pages so I dug this out an posted it this week. Now that I think about it, this is my first post since vacation but you can expect some more regular postings in the coming weeks. This blog post references real events that took place all the way back in July 23, 2009, seems like an eternity ago.

Seems like a simple question, no?

 @fabiogratton captured the moment well with this tweet.

Notice the caps for "it IS confusing to folks."

A room full of over 300 pr, marketing and social media experts at a recent BDI event seemed to be flummoxed…at least for a moment attempting to answer my question.

As Tricia Goeghegan of McNiel Pediatrics told me back stage afterwards (while I was apologizing for asking this seemingly trick question), "if the folks in this room can’t answer this one, it’s clearly a timely question to ask and an opportunity for those who can."  Several other folks echoed how apropos the question was.  So here is my blog about it as promised.

Our social media manger at Flightpath found it to be a pretty easy question to answer. On the spot here is what I was told via my blackberry during the event:

Groups have very limited functionality and don't publish to the news feed. You can't have videos, or custom FBML. Groups are basically a wall with a moderator.

I was also directed by our social media manager to a number of blog posts about it including the Mashable posting others cited on twitter from within the room.
 
But all BDI attendees shared a brief moment of levity with me when Tricia Goeghegan said to me “Well, I’m not sure how to answer that because we have a group page” and asked me if I had the answer. To her credit she was a very good sport. We all got a good chuckle outa that one as I put the ball back in her court.

Tricia deferred to the audience who had several varying answers then she turned it back to her agency partner, Rick Wion, who gave us another moment to pause and chuckle when he said, "well actually its not a group page it’s a fan page that we are using like a group page." Meanwhile the twitter wire blew up with bitly links and tiny urls to Mashable: http://bit.ly/rrzMh.

Here is one sample response (more in the image above and right):

So it begs the question how much do we all really know at this point about when and how to deploy these Facebook pages? Later at the conference in a round table discussion someone from Johnson and Johnson (the parent of Tricia’s company) actually offered another theory: they were actually using an application that mimicked a group wall but was neither a fan nor a group page. Hmmm.  Better get an expert social media manager involved to lock this one down.

The real answer for me on which type of page to use comes back to using the POST method: People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology as described in Groundswell. And yes, this is the 4th time I’ve referenced Groundswell on this blog, people! And I’m proud of it.  We have adopted this method at Flightpath for our Social Media initiatives. And it’s working well. Start with the people, where they are and what they do in the groundswell. Then keeping your objectives in mind, select a strategy and finally choose the right technology.

What are your thoughts on this question? I’d love to get some conversation going here on the Digital Insight blog and some good examples if you care to share them with us.

 

Judge Smails: .. There's a lot of...well, badness in the world today. I see it in court every day… The most important decision you can make right now is what you stand for- goodness...or badness.
Danny: I've made some mistakes in the past. I'm willing to make up for that. I want to be good!

- From my favorite movie, Caddyshack

Can you tell what book I have been reading?  Yes, Groundswell. This will be the third blog post I mention it – and I doubt it will be the last. But what can I say? It is such a great book about social media, everyone at Flightpath is reading it for our inaugural book of the month club. 

I was in HS when George Bush, Sr., uttered that the United States would become "a kinder and gentler nation." In his Inaugural Address he pledged in "a moment rich with promise" to use American strength as "a force for good." 

Well, fast forward to 2009, we are taking back our nation, shaking things up a bit and doing some good thanks to the social media explosion some have refered to as the “groundswell.” 

In Groundswell, Bernoff and Li talk about emotional motivation for the use of social media. Specifically, on page 61 they discuss the “altruistic impulse” to participate in groups on line. 

100 pages later, when trying to explain why thousands of people are helping each other (for free) at dellcommunity.com, they call it Psychic Income. Reminds my of my dear friend and mentor, Cliff Medney who has been taking about psychological capital for years.

Sometimes, it’s hard for number crunchers to understand how to track activity in the groundswell or to connect the dots to sales at retail. But there is more going on here.

There is a great example of this psychic income being played out here in NYC with an exciting Brand with good acts that leverages this notion of psychic income. Be Kind has created a program the taps into the idea of doing kind acts. I met them at the Fancy Food Show and they gave me a cool “You’ve been KINDed” card that gives me permission to do something nice for someone beyond common courtesy.

That very same day, while on my way to the Javits Center, I offered to help a young lady carry one of her three bags up the steps at the times square train station. I was sort of shocked when she rejected my offer, since she seemed to be struggling so much with these three large bags. Well, Natalie Gourvitch at Kind Snacks has solved that problem.

With the card, I can offer the card and say, “I’d like to help,” then you can pay this kindness forward. And the cool thing is at Kinded.com the person you gave the card to can anonymously tell the story.

Last time I checked there were about 500 random acts of kindness tracked on Kinded.com. We need more of that in this world, especially in times like these. We need to help eachother.  And maybe next time I see that young lady with all those bags she’ll let me give her a hand.

In their book Groundswell, Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff define the social media explosion that includes Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, etc. as:

A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.

Sports fans are an insatiable bunch when it comes to news about their favorite team. I personally click on the NFL link at ESPN three or four times a day as if it were a refresh button, even though I’ve already read all the articles there.  The search for other sources has now led me to twitter.

NFL fans will remember Chicago QB Jim McMahon’s use of his headband in the mid-80’s to send messages. Imagine if he had access to Twitter (Commissioner Rozelle would probably have had a cow)! 

I have been following Shaq (@THE_REAL_SHAQ) on Twitter for about 9 months now.  While his tweets haven’t added tremendous value to my life, it is cool to be connected to  a larger than life figure and one of the top 50 players in NBA history.

I’ve met NBA legends MJ, Dr. J, Rick Barry, Moses Malone (fo, fo, fo - I wonder if he would have tweeted that in '83) and Magic Johnson, but I have actually tweeted Shaq during a game I attended in Washington, DC this past season. 

So, when I bumped into him at the All Star Game in Phoenix on my way to the NBA Technology Summit, I was able to say, “Hey Shaq, I’m one of your followers.”  Shaq, if you’re reading this, thanks for autographing my son’s jersey while we were in Phoenix!  Rumor has it Shaq found out he will be playing with the King via Twitter. 

Pro athletes have been taking to Twitter, as have imposters of them; hence the use of “real” in Shaq’s twitter handle. Bogus twittering has become such an issue that a new site – Athletestweet.com – has emerged, making sure athletes are who they say they are on Twitter.

I learned about the new site while reading about my Philadelphia Eagles on ESPN’s nation blog for the NFC East, which had a link to Ashley Fox’s article, “A case of athletes’ tweets” on Philly.com (http://tinyurl.com/mcbcmj) . When I wrote this blog, according to the article, the only Eagle who has been certified by the service is “Macho” Harris.

According to Fox, none of the leagues have specific policies that address Twitter and the nature of micro blogging in this format. Athletestwitter.com and a site I just learned about today from Bill Sobel’s blog (http://tinyurl.com/lsuqny), jockipedia.com,  seem like exactly what Li and Bernoff are talking about when they indicate organizations are not prepared to deal with this groundswell.

Considering the recent firing of Dan Leone for talking a little trash via Facebook for letting Brian Dawkins fly away (see my post: http://tinyurl.com/ljg6el), it will be interesting to see what “Macho” and the other Eagles tweet about going forward.  Will the Eagles bench, fine, or fire players for bad twitters? I guess we will find out soon enough. 

I’d like to follow the President's example and post my own Fathers Day thoughts.   I don’t have Parade magazine but I do have the Flightpath Digital Insight Blog.  And I was feeling good Sunday after a nice brunch with the Lindgren Family. So here it goes.

My son, Travis and I watched the election with awe and wonder. I can recall the president calling out to fathers in America asking them to take more responsibility. We silently contemplated the meaning of that statement; as we watched the president speak in Denver from our respective couches in our dorm room like apartment. 

Like the president, Travis has grown up in a single parent household (with supportive grandparents). I wondered how life will change for him when he is a father one day because of the technologies that helped get President Obama elected.

I often tell people when I arrived at Penn State, in 1990 as a Freshman, I was not issued an email address. When Travis was born I set aside school and went in the Army. When I returned in 1994, everyone had an email account. I got mine jkb107@psu.edu. In many ways I was blessed with a son and email (which proved to be the gateway to my decade long career in the digital world).

Travis and his generation have always been associated with advancments in technology, as opposed to Gen X’ers like myself. I had a walkman, an analog TV, Atari and the Commodore 64. He has two ipods, an HDTV, a Wii and an Xbox.  And of course; he has grown up with the internet. We had a land line growing up he has had 4 mobile phones.

And they use all this technology at once: these kids can play xbox online, speak to the other players via a headset, text message via cellphone and use Facebook, all the while listening to a video on youtube.  They can even text message with their phone in their pocket while pretending to pay attention to a conversation with an adult.
 

Parenting in this fast paced world of technology is challenging for two parents, let alone one.  I participated in a study while at Penn State that became a book: The Single Parent Resource by Brook Noel (to date this is the only book in which I have been quoted – page 230). The book was designed to provide guidance to single parents on everything from how to save a little money, to getting back into the dating game, and how to juggle work, play and family time. The book never contemplated the explosion of the internet and its partners in crime at MTV Networks. 

Freud said that technology creates the necessity for its own conveniences. He would need no telephone if there were no trains to take his son hundreds of miles away. We would need no telegraph if there were no ships for overseas voyages. What would Freud have to say about text messaging, Facebook, Twitter and the places those technologies take our sons and daughters?

One of the key jobs of a parent is to help keep their kid focused. When my son messes up, I try to use the ancient technique of grounding him. However, I forget there are so many access points to circumvent this archaic notion of punishment. For example, in school they have computers in the library with access to Facebook and Myspace. Not to mention, most kids now have access to the internet on their phones.
 
But there are pluses to this technology. I can often be found showing off video of my son playing soccer or hoops via my own Facebook account. Some parents actually “monitor” Facebook to see what their kids are up to. As a Gen Xer, this seems too big brotherish for me, but I understand the temptation. I have also participated in conversations with him and his friends on Facebook, which is always fun.

We spend a lot of time at soccer tournaments. This weekend for the first time I saw that Twitter announcements are being used at a major tournament.  While I won’t be Twittering or sending a Facebook message to my own father, who will get a phone call (on his cell phone) I suspect it won’t be long before we will all be following and communicating to our millennial children primarily through digital means. 

Hopefully we can find ways to enjoy life with them as we all ride the groundswell. Like the children themselves, the digital technologies they are growing up with are consternating and amazing all at once.  We love both and yet they frustrate us at times.  I feel fortunate to be working at an organization that is focused on "Bringing It to Digital" because I am involved in helping brands leverage the technologies my son uses everyday. 

PS - Son, I love you and I admire your courage. Being your father has been a great joy and the most rewarding challenge of my life.

PPS – Dad, thanks for being there. No matter what stupid stuff I did in my analog world.
 
Happy Father’s Day!
 

There has been a lot of talk at the conferences and panels I have been attending lately about the convergence of PR, marketing, branding, communications and, well, you name it, online. While presenting her case study on peoplepets.com at the recent Business Development Institute Social Media Communications Leadership Forum, Kimberly Miller, VP of Consumer Marketing at People.com, talked about how social media could become a vehicle for gathering usability feedback for one of their new social networks. That was something I had not heard lately. 

Before Kimberly presented, JetBlue’s Morgan Johnston, a regular BDI presenter and all around good guy, highlighted JetBlue's policy change to not charge the same 50 bucks for fold up bikes that fit into a carry on bag. This policy change was made based on  feedback from JetBlue's twitter followers.  Seems pretty obvious, but why not listen to the people using your social media to help guide your design?  Next thing you know someone is going to actually ask the good folks in the corporate call centers what people are complaining about regarding the websites when they call in!

As my regular readers know I love to talk about the ultimate value of usability (Momma Said Knock U(sability) Out, and Can't afford usability testing? Think again) I applaud Time Inc’s recognition that listening to the users is what matters most and then combine this social media driven feedback with a traditional battery of usability testing to make the appropriate adjustments after six months of operation. 

Way to go Kimberly! And you too Morgan… I need to get myself one of those fold up bikes. Then I guess I can finally take those ugly bike racks off the top of my Jetta and put the bike in the trunk.

So is Social Networking maturing?

Abbey Klaassen and Beth Snyder Bulik write in their Ad Age Article (http://tinyurl.com/c7e347): “While social networking used to be the domain of the under-30 crowd, its use among older adults is skyrocketing. As of January 2009, more than 50% of Facebook users and 44% of MySpace users in the U.S. were over 35 years old, according to ComScore estimates. The single biggest age demographic in the U.S. on both Facebook and MySpace is between 35 and 44. Indeed, Facebook says its fastest-growing demo is 55-plus.”

I'm hearing the question more and more these days. Isn’t Facebook just for the young kids?

Well, everything comes of age, including myself. Now even I am on the cusp of the ripe old age of 37, which puts me in that 35+ category when I fill in online forms, and perhaps more importantly when I sign up for the rec basketball league at the NYSC. And of course right smack in the middle of this facebook question.

At the ironically named, AdAge Digital Conference in NY recently, Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook told the audience that older generations are some of the most rapidly growing segments of Facebook and a common question she fields at events is, "how can I get my kids to be my friend on Facebook?" (You can review our Tweets from Ad Age Conf. twitter.com/FlightpathNY with #aadigi)

Fortunately, when I got started on Facebook, my son became my very first friend. But I had to hoodwink him into it by telling him my boss made me get into facebook because I needed to know it for work. I’ve since been friended by a few of his buddies (we all talk a little friendly trash) but I can recall the comment from his girlfriend at the time: "How could you friend your DAD!?#$%."

And I have to admit, when I first got on Facebook and I friended my son, I thought I was very hip. Then more and more “friends” came streaming in. As my dear friend and colleague Ryan Kitson wrote in his blog post To Friend or Not to Friend (http://tinyurl.com/cddo4d), sometimes it's hard to determine who is and isn’t a “friend.”

And then I got to wondering about who my own friends are on Facebook. My HS “friends” are definitely on Facebook. My younger family is there and active, my parents are not there yet (at least I don't think they are), and then there is my hoops crew. Only a few of them are on Facebook.

The over 35 Hastings-on-Husdon hoops group is a little social network of its own and we recently got to play hoops in Madison Square Garden to celebrate one of our member’s 50th birthday! Now that I think of it, the invitation for this party unlike most of the others I’ve received lately didn't come out on Facebook. Nor have the pictures been posted on Facebook to my knowledge….yet. Don't get me wrong, guys, I'm not calling you all seniors!

I’ve heard 40 is the new 20, so that means I can look forward to lots more hoops and lots more Facebook. And next year when we play at the Garden we’ll have to send the invite and post the pictures on Facebook.

My son, God love him, is 15 and in the 10th grade. I recently was told by his teachers that texting during school was a distraction. He has become so sophisticated at texting that even with a broken screen (which I refused to fix, thinking it may resolve the problem) he can text in his pocket without looking at the letters. Now you can imagine how surprised I was to learn from Nancy Giles on CBS Sunday that Jurors and Senators are now twittering during trials and presidential speeches.

In my own experience, at events like AdAge, DPAC, and other industry events it is now common to see monitors that share tweets from audiences who theoretically are paying attention to the presenters or panels.

I went to Catholic school and while I was no angel I can’t imagine what sister Condradine(shown here in the middle of the picture holding her standard issue Smith and Wesson with the rest of her posse) would have done to me if I tried to tweet during my calculus class in the ‘80s.  I mean my buddies Greg, Brian and I had a pretty sophisticated communication system that included passing notes, hand signals and code words to mess around during class.

How I would have loved to have some monitors up in the classroom transmitting 140 character comments about the teacher!

Then of course as you can see they did have a Dirty Harry, "Go ahead, make my day" kind of approach to that stuff that is lacking in today's world.

But what do I tell my millennial son about paying attention in class if our nation’s leaders and jurors can’t keep their hands off their pdas during mission critical moments to send 140 character messages to lord knows who about who knows what? Shouldn't they be paying attention to the matters at hand?

Now in preparation for this article I did a quick google search on nancy's report and it seems like she is taking a little heat from the twitter enthusiasts, one of them even claims tiwtter was responsible for helping overthrow Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan. How can you argue against that?

PS- I am on twitter at http://twitter.com/joshuablair