As you know, I’m involved with a startup called LifestreamBackup.com. Well, today we are officially rebranding ourselves Backupify! As it turns out, when you say “lifestream backup” to people outside the social media world, they think you’re an environmental product or nature preserve. We hug trees as much as the next guy or gal, but it’s not what we’re selling. (Rob has more of an explanation on the Backupify blog here.)

In order to help spread the word about Backupify, we are also making a couple of changes you can benefit from. First, if you haven’t heard yet, we’ll back up your Twitter account absolutely free. This lets you try Backupify out without having to pay anything, plus it backs up your Twitter database (tweets, followers, followees and direct messages). Even if you want to try out the full service, you get two weeks of everything for a free trial.

Second, we are very anxious to know more about your backup needs, so much so that we’re willing to offer up some rewards for your efforts. We have three Amazon gift cards, one for $250.00 and two for $100.00 (more on how to win those in a moment). We also have a supply of premium accounts (10 gigabytes of storage valued at $39.00 per year) to give away. In order to win, all you have to do is blog about Backupify. (YOU GET A FREE PREMIUM ACCOUNT FOR ONE YEAR JUST FOR BLOGGING IT!)

We want to know one of the following things:

• What part of your online data (photos, emails, Tweets, Facebook data, etc.) is so important, you’d be devastated to lose it and why.
• What is the top online service we should add to Backupify.com?
• What is the best thing we could do now to improve the service of backing up your online data?
• Be sure to disclose you’re blogging about Backupify.com to enter our feedback contest and that you get a free premium account for doing so. (FTC and all … werd.)

Once you blog it, you need to do the following things to get a free premium account and enter the drawing for the Amazon gift cards:

• Email me (jason – at – socialmediaexplorer.com) with the link to your post.

That’s it. We’ll take each entry, number them, place them into a random draw and pull out the two $100 gift cards, then the $250 gift card in a live drawing on Twitter on Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2009 at 12 p.m. ET/9 a.m. PT. Rob May, Backupify’s founder, and I will conduct the drawing our very ownselves. And we may even live stream it to provide accurate transparency.

If you haven’t tried out Backupify yet, please do so. Learn more on the website.

Today marks the launch of a new social media online magazine called Social Media Examiner. Michael Stelzner, who authored the awesome Social Media Marketing Industry Report, has put together a roster of awesome contributors, including Mari Smith, Denise Wakeman, Chris Garrett and more. Interviews with other notable social media thinkers and practitioners like Deb Micek and Dan Zarrella are among the early offerings as well. I will be offering up the occasional piece to support the effort, too.

To help launch Social Media Examiner, Denise, Mari, Chris and I will each join Michael for one-hour live question and answer sessions today. You can stop by during each person’s time slot, see live streaming video chat with us and Michael and dive into the chat room to ask questions about the social media topics, problems or issues on your mind. Today’s live chat schedule is as follows:

• 10 a.m. ET/7 a.m. PT – Chris Garrett
• 12 p.m. ET/9 a.m. PT – Denise Wakeman
• 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT – Mari Smith
• 4 p.m. ET/1 p.m. PT – Jason Falls

This is a unique opportunity to learn precisely what you want to know from some really smart people. I’ll try to hold up my end of the bargain, too.

Go check out the site. Grab the RSS feed and put it on your reading list. I’m sure the advice you’ll get from the aforementioned and more will be an awesome addition to your learning. If it’s not, let me know and I’ll pass it on to Michael to ensure that feedback is heard.

Now that all the obligatory promotion is out of the way, let me tell you a bit about why I’m involved and why I’m recommending this. First off, I don’t profit from this at all. Michael is a friend who has built an amazingly successful business as a writer, consultant and online educator. His White Paper Source series of content is an excellent resource for people who want to write for a living. I’ve served as an affiliate for his Social Media and Copywriting Success Summits in the past and love the work he puts in to deliver valuable learning to his audience.

But more than my relationship with Michael, the concept of a social media magazine, something that offers more about marketing using social media than the Mashables and Read Write Webs of the world, is a good one. The combination of smart social media thinkers providing helpful, useful and even actionable advice will give you yet another great resource for social media ideas.

At a minimum, come chat with us today. As the questions that are bugging you. Don’t just come see me. Get Mari Smith to tell you how to leverage Facebook for your business. Denise Wakeman has blogging ideas that will absolutely deliver for you. Chris Garrett is another one of those “don’t miss” guys we can all learn from. It’s an opportunity to roll up your sleeves and ask the tough questions. We’re excited to help Michael’s launch with the opportunity and hope to see you there.

Today I’m thrilled to present to you the first-ever Social Media Explorer Report. “Customer Twervice: Exploring Case Studies & Best Practices In Customer Service Efforts Using Twitter,” surveys 10 companies using Twitter for customer service and attempts to present insights and best practices for you or your company. The report is free you can download the PDF here.

Customer Twervice

My hope is that the information in the report will give you at least some anecdotal research that can help you formulate customer service strategies using Twitter based on the existing best practices and examples from those doing it. The document is certainly not final and as both Twitter and how companies are using it evolve, I’ll revise accordingly. The permanent URL for the report’s home is simply http://socialmediaexplorer.com/customertwervice.

Because this is my rookie effort at writing a report, I’d like to ask for your feedback. Is the report useful to you? Would similar be in the future? I don’t hesitate to admit I’m not trained as a researcher or analyst. There aren’t Forrester-esque graphics and charts here. But I am trained as a journalist and built the report around interviews with people hard at it, actually performing Customer Twervice.

And I would encourage you to join the conversation about the report on Twitter by using the hashtag “#twervice.” I’ll see your comments and questions there and will respond if I can.

Enjoy.

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Advertising genius Alex Bogusky and his Crispin Porter + Bogusky colleague and creative thought leader John Windsor have a new book out called, “Baked In: Creating Products That Market Themselves.” I’ve read it and highly recommend it.

The point of the book is to deliver a series of recipes to enable you to bake great marketing into your product by making great products. It’s a fantastic (and quick) read for the brand manager, ad agency types, C-level folks and even the communications world newbie wanting to get a jump start on some great ideas for their careers.

As with anything Bogusky does, the book has some unique quirks that I loved. The most notable is the constant use of the @bakedin Twitter handle and reminder that the book is just the beginning of the conversations around baking in greatness. Each of the book’s 28 recipes is represented by a hashtag, too, so if you were to Tweet something to @bakedin and tagged it with “#DNA,” for instance, you would be letting Alex and John (both on Twitter and surprisingly engaging, by the way) or others involved with the book know you want to chat about mining the history of your brand for ideas.

This is a genius way of not just engaging an audience around the book, but adding to the potential ability for the buzz to “go viral” as people Tweet and ask, since their followers will see the references and perhaps become curious enough to see what @bakedin is all about.

The long and short of it is that there are about five people in the advertising and marketing world we should intentionally soak up knowledge from. Alex and John are two of them. Buy the book. You’ll at least get some great ideas out of it.

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I sat down to write a blog post one day last week and ran into a rare conundrum. I couldn’t think of a good topic. Luckily, writer’s block and I don’t know each other well. I’m a wordy bastard. It just comes naturally, I guess.

After thinking a bit about what I might draft in that fit of writer’s limbo, I decided I would jot down some notes on what to do when you have writer’s block. The one note I came up with was, “Sometimes, what you don’t write is as important as what you do.”

The point is that if you can’t think of something to say, keep your mouth shut. I had nothing on my mind that day that would make your time worth spending here, so I moved on to something else. When a new notion came across me to write something that might be of use, I went back to blogging.

For the most part, I publish something on Monday, Wednesday and Friday here at SME. Occasionally, and if inspired to do so, I’ll throw in a post or two on another day during the week, but keep to that thrice-weekly schedule with fair regularity. But if I happen to get busy with client work or family commitments and don’t post something one day, it’s not the end of the world. After all, I didn’t waste your time just to meet a mythical audience expectation. I’d rather wait and give you something worth reading.

That’s not a bad approach to providing content on your blog or website, personal or company. While I would advocate developing and sticking to an editorial calendar to get your audience conditioned to expect new material on a consistent basis, if you force something out that isn’t up to their expectations, it can hurt more than help. Your readers won’t be upset if you miss a day or two. Don’t get too far out of your routine or they’ll drift. But try not to keep up the pace for the sake of keeping up the pace.

When you’re dry, you’re dry. Come back when you’ve got something good to share.

How do you get past writer’s block? Please share some ideas with us in the comments.

IMAGE: “Gagged Man” by Gemenacom on Shutterstock.com

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Yesterday I read this call to action from Jennifer Leggio (whom I have an intellectual crush on, by the way) on Brian Solis’s blog. Then I saw the first video below on both Ad Contrarian and Ad Broad, both of which I love when I have time to read them. With apologies to all aforementioned and others who have complained about this topic, can we please get off the ego-driven, high-horse pedestal and shut the hell up about “social media gurus?”

I was asked about the advent of the social media expert (something I don’t believe exists) a few months ago. As a result, I recorded this video:

While the harsh tone then and now will be interpreted incorrectly by some, I still feel that way. However, my frustration has turned more toward those whining about the 20-something trying to make his or her way in the social media world, hoping to ride the wave like other digital natives and put food on their table. I don’t fault the uninformed for claiming to be something they aren’t. We’ve all spit-shined our resume a bit much at one point in time, I’d bet. I hope brands and companies are smart enough to see through that.

But attacking these enterprising young folks does two things that the “experts” doing the whining aren’t seeing:

1. For potential clients, it makes them doubt all of us as there is little apparent distinction between the experienced and the not in a field so young.
2. It can make you look like an elitist ass who’s afraid Johnny Icrediblog is going to take clients away from you.

While I do agree with Leggio’s assessment that your social media “expert” should have case studies, proof points and successes that point to integrated wins with an overall marketing campaign, the truth is that limits the pool to about 3-4 dozen folks in the world. No one has been doing it that long and that successfully. We’re all learning as we go. Yeah, there are a few with some good proof points, but this world, as we know it, is 4-5 years old at best.

I don’t like Leggio’s invitation for the “gurus” to jump in the comments to prove their worth. The gurus need to prove their worth to their clients, not Solis’s audience, or any of us for that matter. If they don’t, they won’t get paid much longer.

And while the video (produced on pretty damn cool software by the way) was cleverly done by Markham Nolan and is a funny, playful look at the whole guru phenomenon, it undermines the credibility of anyone in the social media business by implying anyone can do this and do it well.

(I can take a joke. It is funny. It’s just the dog pile that’s bugging me.)

The truth is that every social media manager, strategist, director, lackey, person or thingy at one point didn’t have a clue what they were doing. My first social media plan for a client was simply a PR guy connecting the dots between a communications need and a social tool that provided a solution. It didn’t make me smart. It didn’t make me an expert. But it made my client very happy and a career path emerged.

Since then, I make my clients happy or I get fired. I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks of me. And yes, I know there are some experienced social media players out there who think I’m one of those “gurus.” I’m not going to defend my reputation or credibility to them just because I don’t live in Silicon Valley. Call my clients if you wanna know.

For them to make fun of the youngster trying to sell themselves is to make fun of each one of us at some point in our career.

My former agency colleagues rolled their eyes at me when I pitched social media ideas. Some of them still do. The ad blogs pointed to above are snickering about social media because of the funny video like it’s a fad and anyone selling it is a used car salesman in t-shirts and jeans.

And there are some in the social media world wanting to fan the flames of these character attacks because there’s some annoying dipshit with no provable reputation who criticizes their blog on Twitter.

It hurts us all in the long run. Please stop.

Sorry for the rant. You may return to your regularly scheduled programming. Or call me names in the comments. Enjoy.

One of the biggest challenges brand-side marketers face in dealing with social media is incorporating the necessary time to monitor and respond to conversation online. Marketers are busy people. Most only spend about 10-20 percent of their time dealing with advertising or their agency partners. One of the biggest challenges for advertising and public relations agencies in relation to social media is getting brand-side trust to enable the agency to read and react to the social web without layers of approvals.

There’s at least one agency out there that seems to have developed a solution that helps mitigate both problems with an interesting tool and approach.

A Zeitgeits & Coffee Dashboard view featuring Facebook and Twitter posts for internal and client review. (Click for larger image.)

Media Logic, an “integrated communications firm,” (read: Ad agency) with offices in Albany, N.Y., and Oakland, Calif., has recently repositioned themselves as a “conversation-centric” marketing company with social media as the central focus of their offering. But it’s not that they’re using Facebook apps and “viral” videos to drive new business. They’ve actually put some smarts behind a technology platform and marketing approach that focuses on listening and engaging people on the social web.

The gist of their pitch is this:

• The primary driver of their offering is a technology platform called Zeitgeist and Coffee. It’s essentially a social media monitoring dashboard that the agency manages for the client. Each client is assigned a “conversation manager” who reviews the inbound stream, prioritizes mentions and conversations for addressing or follow up, and perhaps even offers suggested responses. The client can log in to the platform to review the latest posts, approve or amend suggested responses or even respond directly to the conversations.
• They claim their approach, a “suite of products,” defines opportunities and initiatives for the client; identifies goals and objectives; their technology then sweeps the landscape to gauge the conversations; establishes a platform, content, voice and volume for a marketing effort; defines roles and responsibilities for the effort and ultimately allows their clients to join the conversation.
• Media Logic’s angle is this is a social media-driven solution for marketers. They recognize companies and brands have internal struggles as to who controls social media. This puts the marketing team in the driver’s seat for consumer engagement.

The key takeaway from learning about Media Logic for me was to show you how one agency is building an offering around social media by taking a brand manager’s stress relative to social media away. They’ve built an easy to use tool to monitor, prioritize and curate conversations so the brand can feel as if they have a grasp on what’s out there.

At first glance, Zeitgeist & Coffee appears to be an agency doing a good job of monitoring and holding their client’s hand with listening and cursory engaging in social media. But that’s one small part of doing social media well. Media Logic does offer a suite of “products” that at least seems to account for the other parts of social media — producing ideas that proactively engage consumers — but they certainly deserve some credit for attacking the sore spot for most brands with the Zeitgeist & Coffee product.

In case you were wondering, Media Logic doesn’t offer the Zeitgeist & Coffee product as a stand alone service. You pretty much have to bring them on board as your AOR for social media work to get access to it. They preach their process is more important than one or more of their products. Despite their generous use of the word “proprietary” (pet peeve of mine for some reason) Zeitgeist & Coffee while inventive and cool, especially coming from an agency, can be closely replicated with a paid monitoring solution and some smart thinking.

Still, don’t miss the important point of Media Logic’s approach: Your agency’s clients will be more comfortable with social media, and more willing to spend money with you for it, if you hold their hand a bit and make it easy for them to understand and engage. Kudos to Media Logic for showing some of us the way.

Media Logic isn’t the first to do it. They may not even be the best out there. What is your agency doing to embrace and help teach your clients to embrace social media. Please share your ideas in the comment section so we can all learn a new trick or two.

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I soft-launched a little survey on Twitter earlier this week, but wanted to make sure that those who weren’t watching at that moment (or didn’t see retweets, etc.) got an invite, too. I’m doing a simple, less than five minute survey around the topic of online learning as it relates to social media. You can take it by clicking here to visit the survey page.

The thought behind this is that I hope to begin offering some premium value webinar-type content to folks soon. These would be paid offerings. Think of them as intensive learning sessions, everything from 101 stuff to advanced thinking around social media strategies. The thoughts I share on the blog and my newsletter would remain free.

The content I hope to provide with the premium offerings would be well beyond the depth and breadth of that I can offer on the free outlets. I will share more of the ideas as they begin to take shape, but rest assured whatever I offer will be done with a 100-percent effort to ensure great value is delivered for your trouble, and done so beyond the single webinar experience.

Keep in mind the survey is a starting point and I’ve not made any hard decisions on this yet. I’m hoping for your input. Please fill out the survey and feel free to drop in thoughts in the comments. Think about these questions:

• What type of online learning offering would appeal to you?
• What topics would you like to learn from experts in the social media and Internet marketing fields?
• How much would you pay for 1-2 hours of intensive learning with benefits beyond the single session?
• How much would you pay if the content were so strong, you could cut the cost of a conference out of your budget?

A penny for your thoughts?

IMAGE: Doug Stevens on Shutterstock.com

My friend Mark Dykeman had some problems with his hosting provider the last few days. His blog went down. Websites do that sometimes. It’s inconvenient and annoying, but it happens.

But Mark doesn’t depend on his blog for his primary income. He doesn’t drive thousands of dollars in business through it. While I’m not certain, he may not make any money from his blog. He blogs. He writes his thoughts and observations on the world and shares them with people. He’s a smart guy, too. You should read his stuff.

Why is this relevant to social media?

Because when his hosting service was repaired, he went live with a short, simple blog post that was entitled, “Service Restored.” Mark doesn’t likely profit financially from his blog, his content, but with it he provides a service to his readers. They enjoy consuming the content he produces. They depend on him.

He isn’t just a blogger. He’s a service provider.

Businesses can take a lesson from Mark. When you are providing content to your audience, you aren’t simply marketing your wares. You aren’t driving sales of your product or service. You should view yourself as providing a service to your audience.

The return from that investment isn’t always important. Your readers depend on you. The return on not serving them well is that they lose interest or trust in you and your company.

What are you doing today to provide a service to your website visitors? Are you making sure you never have to apologize and say, “Service Restored?”

Food for thought.

IMAGE: Stephen Coburn on Shutterstock.com

A few weeks ago, Facebook unveiled the ability to tag, or electronically connect, friends and other Facebook users in your status updates, notes and such using the “@” sign before their name. As you start typing the name, the list of friends comes up, just like they would if you were addressing an email to them, and their name then magically becomes hyperlinked to their profile page. The same works for group or pages you’re a member or fan of.

While some where all a Twitter about the move because the “@” function is a straight rip-off of similar functionality on Twitter, that fact is of minimal importance. No one owns the “@” sign. What’s important is that Facebook has expanded the ability for you to connect with your friends, fans or followers more frequently.

For a business, this can allow you to stay more top of mind with your friends or fans. When you tag someone, they receive a notification you’ve done so and, thus, come see what you tagged them in. This is potentially very powerful for businesses. As the administrator of a fan page, when you tag someone in a wall post or note, it appears to them as if the business or organization tagged them, not the individual logged in to administer the account.

(NOTE: The catch is that you can only tag those who are your Facebook friends as well. If someone is a fan of your business, but not a friend of yours on the network, you won’t be able to tag them. As a result, you’ll have to think through having a professional account for yourself that you use to friend people who are fans of your brand. Some may not feel comfortable friending someone from the brand as well, but some probably will.)

However, there are some best practices to consider when tagging others on Facebook so that you, or your business or organization, doesn’t abuse the ability and upset your fans. Here is my list of five best practices for tagging in Facebook.

Five Rules For Facebook Tagging For Business

1. Only tag people who will find the information you’re posting relevant. Throwing up a coupon and tagging all your friends is spammy. Use your update or email marketing features for that. Use tagging when you mention one of your Facebook friends showed up at your event and you were glad they came. It sends a personal “thank you” in a public way and allows them to see that you appreciate them.
2. Don’t tag the same people all the time. Just like blasting messages via email, when you get into copy and paste procedures, you become spam-like and annoying. Make sure you follow rule number one, but mix it up and tag different people in different messages, pictures or notes.
3. Set your notifications appropriately. The first thing most people noticed when the tagging feature was added is they started getting notifications of not just being tagged, but when anyone else responded to the item you were tagged in. Change those email notifications to get the exact information you want from Facebook and one that you don’t want or don’t need.
4. Be sensitive to your customer’s wishes. I would only recommend tagging people you have a great relationship with an know won’t mind you connecting them with your brand publicly. Your best friends … fans … advocates. Tagging a new person who has joined your Fan Page in a note or status update can seem a bit creepy if they haven’t had a chance to get to know you yet.
5. Encourage your employees, friends, followers and fans to tag your fan page when mentioning you on Facebook. It’s a simple act (just hit @ followed by your brand name or page name, then select) that places a link to your page or group in their updates. I would recommend, however, you ask in a way that is subtle and implies that you’d appreciate the gesture but it certainly isn’t required. Don’t worry. They’ll share the love if they really love you.

I’d love to hear more about how you’re tagging folks and if you even like the new abilities. My friend Paul Marobella pointed out there’s no tagging functionality yet on the Facebook iPhone app. I’m sure that will come in an update soon, though. Jump in the comments and let me know what you think. Or, practice and tag me with a note on Facebook.

IMAGE: Photo by Lasse Kristensen on Shutterstock.com.

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Wednesday’s unveiling of Google Sidewiki did something pretty eye-opening. It forced every company in the world with a website to get hip to social media and do it now.

Essentially, anyone who downloads a browser toolbar for Firefox or Internet Explorer, with one for Google’s Chrome soon to come, can add comments and notes to a sidebar expansion of any website. Even yours. Without your permission or even knowledge.

And remember what Google does best … serves up relevant advertising in search results. I would expect your competitors will have the opportunity to place their ads on your Sidewiki soon, too. (Of course, you would be able to place yours on theirs, too.)

While Google is a technology company, not a social media company, what their latest technology does is force feed social media on the world. If you weren’t ready for conversations with customers this morning, you’d better get ready by tonight … or faster. People are probably commenting on your site as we speak.

Google’s promotional video (below) paints a pretty picture, asking the following:

• What if you could easily contribute to any web page and help others?
• What if you could learn from others who have visited a page before you?

It indicates the Sidewiki will lead to pages having:

• Expert insights on important issues
• Helpful tips as you browse
• Background information for more history
• Added perspective on new technology

Oh, what a wonderful world it would be? Unfortunately, that’s not the world we live in. What Google Sidewiki also allows for is insults, spam and other potentially damaging comments to be added to your website’s experience. Without your permission.

However, it should be noted that not everyone is going to download the browser toolbar and see the comments. Out of that subset of the population, fewer of them will actually place comments or participate in the discussions. Of that small set of the population, though, you’ll need more brand fans than brand detractors. Are you ready for that?

While it is true that brand conversations are happening all over the web and companies should listen and participate in order to both mitigate problems, but also embrace consumer feedback and interaction, this changes the game because the comments are attached to the website in question. They aren’t on a page on an unrelated or unattached blog, wiki or social network.

Some important points:

• The content is technically on Google’s servers and fed into the sidebar of those who download it. It’s not actually on your website. What this means is that Google has turned the browser into a supplement of your website, however. Legally, you don’t own the browser and the user opts in to the Sidewiki by downloading it and agreeing to the terms of service. So if you’re considering a lawsuit, I’m afraid you don’t have much chance to fight it.
• While users are free to leave whatever comment they want, they have to be logged in as a Google user. So, unlike the awful comments in most newspaper’s websites, there’s at least a shred of accountability for who leaves them. Anyone can sign up for a free account, though, so the turds will be turds.
• Users have the option of rating a comment as useful and reporting abuse. Google is, thus, relying on the community to weed out the bad stuff. You can only add your vote, though, not control what’s said on your site.

While I’m excited about the technology and the positives of having both context and perspective from erstwhile website visitors to enhance the browsing experience, I’m bothered at the supposition that the world is ready for this. This software feature is the online equivalent of people suddenly being allowed to post graffiti, flyers and posters all over the front of your building.

Jeremiah Owyang has some great insights and implications you should consider as a marketer or executive of a company in light of this development. His advice is sound and worth following. But Jeremiah falls short of the reality of the situation: Few businesses in the world are plugged in to the social vibe or are Starbucks buddies with the Silicon Valley set. There are going to be a lot of companies upset about this. While I agree this is where the world is going and businesses need to move toward understanding and embracing both the technology and the communications implications of its implementation, just telling them they have to is short-sighted.

Still, go read his advice. It’s sound and no one is going to give you better. Just get a big glass of water before. That pill is going to be a bitter one to swallow for some.

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Seth Godin announced Squidoo’s latest venture this week. Brands in Public is, as I understand it, an aggregation of conversations about certain brands. Godin’s team has apparently developed a nice way to aggregate and parse out relevant conversation about various brands and put them all together in one big page. That’s not all that innovative, but how they’re going about it is eyebrow raising.

First, Brands in Public will aggregate conversations and create these aggregation points for brands without their consent or buy in. There’s nothing wrong with that. The conversations are public and no one “owns” them. However, in order for a brand to officially have a presence on the page and highlight their responses to certain issues, etc., they have to pay $400 per month or more.

At first glance, you just think, “So what? The brands can just participate in the conversations on the various social networks and they Brands in Public spider will pick up those conversations as well. Hopefully, Brands in Public isn’t doing anything shady by parsing out the brand participation and that theory will hold true. However, think for a moment of the power, reach and influence Godin has. If his idea takes hold (it probably will because on the surface it’s a good one) and he markets it the way he’s capable of, Brands in Public could be come THE place to go see the “unfiltered” conversation about brands everywhere.

If that scenario plays out, then the $400 or more fee Godin’s company plans to charge is, in a way, blackmail.

Or is it smart marketing? Step 1: Build a place people can see fair, unfiltered conversations about brands. Step 2: Market the place until it becomes a public resource looked upon as the place to go and see the true buzz about a brand. Step 3: Lease brand control of the page out for a fee and make money off the paranoid brand manager who insists on having “control” of the conversation.

Can a competitor pay to take over your page? Can a random person have the same access? Probably not, but is that fair? Everyone can participate in the conversation except the brand, unless they pay?

The only saving grace in this is that, I assume, Brands in Public will not adulterate the conversations aggregated to filter out the perspective of the brand. But are we all willing to assume that? I see accusations, controversy and perhaps even litigation coming on this one.

Godin’s company will make money off this. But will it be at the peril of decency?

A penny for your thoughts?

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• Will Squidoo Kill Your Company’s Shot at (Free) Feel-Good PR on Twitter? (Fast Company Blog)
• Seth Godin Tries Out Brand Jacking (Lisa Barone at Outspoken Media)
• Squidoo Aims To Make Brands Pay For Dedicated Web Dashboards (techcrunch.com)
• Brands In Public: A New Reputation Management Tool (socialmediatoday.com)

Zakta

In July, I told you about a new experiment in search that was refreshing. Zakta is a new search engine — I know, I know. Who in their right mind would try and compete with Google, Bing, Yahoo and so on? — but one that has some legs. I mentioned it in one of my Pitch Log Mashups but with their recent full launch, I revisited them and want to make sure you understand the implications of what they’re doing.

Zakta allows you to do two things with your search results that other engines do not: 1) Edit and cull your results to be more reflective of what you’re really searching for and 2) Share those results with other users. There are a bunch of other interesting facets to the tool, but these are significant for a couple of reasons.

1. If you find yourself searching for similar terms over and over again, you can save and simplify your searches.
2. Sharing your searches with others, and following the searches of those on the network you trust is, at least theoretically, a powerful feature.

Imagine needing to know something about the New York Jets. You know Gary Vaynerchuk is perhaps the biggest Jets fan on the planet. If he were a connection on Zakta and had saved a search about the New York Jets (you know he would), wouldn’t you trust his editing of the search results better than keyword-based or even semantic-powered search results of some computer? I would.

The reason this is significant for businesses is that, if (and it’s a big if … more in a moment) Zakta takes off and becomes a relevant player in the search business, your company could become a go-to resource for relevant search results in your industry. By building trust with an online audience, providing relevant links, information and resources, you could be looked to as the thought leader or authority for your industry or location. If you then share your curated search results for the topics people trust you for, you’ve provided them with additional value and reason to trust you.

The key is not abusing that trust, of course.

Here’s where I think Zakta has challenges, and it is a fundamental point I hope many start-up types are paying attention to:

The biggest challenge you face with a new product is if the success of it depends on changing people’s behavior.

Zakta will have to prove, through relevancy, immediacy and usefulness, that changing people’s behavior from starting at Google, Yahoo, Bing or some other engine, is worth the switch. Will they do it? I’m cautiously optimistic.

I don’t know that my friend’s curated search results are the deal-breaker for me. Bing has changed my habits a bit, but only if I notice the first few Google results to giving me what I want. I still start with Google. Zakta’s connection tool only yielded one friend on their network for me. Granted, Pete Blackshaw’s search results are worth looking at. Dude is smart. But without a wider net, Zakta becomes less appealing.

Still, I’m fascinated at the possibilities. Sundar Kadayam, Zakta’s CEO, is the former founder and CTO at Intelliseek and was also with Nielsen Buzzmetrics. He knows how to build successful web-based businesses. There’s a ton of relevance and power behind the Zakta idea. I just wonder how the masses will come. If they do, it has game-changing possibilities. If they don’t, they still may have enough technology and juice to get sold to someone big with big money.

Either way, it’s a tool worth looking at and spending some time with. My friend’s search results, culled and curated for my edification, are useful. If we all did it, we’d have something, now wouldn’t we?

What’s your take? What search feature would change your behavior? Is someone you know editing search results for a certain topic relevant? Why? Why not? The comments are yours.

Related articles by Jason Falls & Zemanta

• Zakta Is No Ordinary Search Engine (AltSearchEngines.com)
• Is Zakta The Facebook Of Search? (Doug Ross)
• Zakta – The New Way To Organize Web Knowledge (Matthew Hurst)
• New Search Engine Holds Promise (Cincinnati Enquirer)

Advertising agencies around the country are trying to figure out social media. How do we do it? How do we sell it? Do we have to?

The answer is probably yes, you do have to if you want to continue to offer a full range of marketing services to your clients, and bill appropriately. Some agencies are doing a good job adjusting, hiring smart social media thinkers and getting smart about social media quickly. Others are still cocking their head sideways like a puppy trying to figure out a vacuum cleaner.

Sadly, many ad agencies never figured out Interactive, let’s call it Web 1.0. Now you add a layer of Web 2.0 or social media on top of that and many agencies and their respective creatives (art directors, copywriters, designers) and clients services folks are rendered dumb struck at the thought of all things digital.

There problem is that there exists a culture clash between ad agencies and social media marketing. The difficulty is the result of both philosophical and tactical problems. The good news is problems can be solved. But it will take some work.

The Philosophical Problems

Social media is, in many ways, the antithesis of advertising. Advertising is one-way communications aimed at large groups of consumers. Social media is two-way communications that requires listening as well as speaking. It can also be said that social media is a multiple-way communications method as brands can speak and listen, but also watch other consumers talk to each other. An agency’s creatives and strategic planners suddenly having to factor in listening and observing to their communications process after decades of just shouting from the roof tops presents a seismic culture shift.

Social media is also about building relationships. Advertising is about driving people to a buying decision. In fact, I would propose that in most cases, advertising has nothing to do with a relationship. It’s all about persuading someone to take action, not discussing the decision-making process and becoming a trusted resource for the person choosing. As Chris Heuer says, good marketing today doesn’t try to sell the customer on something. It tries to help them buy it.

Similarly, it can be said that the essence of social media, in many ways, is good customer service. I would propose that, with exceptions certainly, advertising agencies have never cared about serving the customer. They care about making the sale. Advertising is most often used to drive customers to purchase, not care for them after the fact.

So, philosophically, advertising and social media are very different. Creatives, client services folks, account planners and the like are being asked to undertake a new method of communications that runs counter to everything they’ve ever been taught.

The Tactical Problems

Peel off a layer or two in the social media and advertising comparison and you start to see some of the real reasons ad agencies struggle with social media. Please note that I offer these opinions as generalizations but not as blanket statements. There are lots of creatives, planners and the like out there who understand the social and digital worlds. While I’m sure I may furl a brow or two with this, I’m applying general truths I’ve seen through experience working for and with and asking questions about several advertising agencies over the last few years.

First, advertising creatives are taught and still primarily focus on TV, print and outdoor advertising. Despite the media trends, art schools either aren’t pushing students hard enough toward web-centric, or even web-inclusive, work; or many of today’s creatives are lost in filling their “book,” not realizing digital is the type of compelling art agencies are in desperate need of.

Also, art directors and designers are often focused on the art, not the experience. User experience, whether tactile and off-line or virtual and on-, creates compelling engagement with consumers. Art often times is just pretty.

Interactive or digital (website and application development and programming) professionals typically come from technology backgrounds driven by code and algorithms. They’ve got the function down pat but lack the creative side, or form, to produce effective work.

To make matters worse, creative teams of art directors and copywriters are sent to brainstorm and create campaign elements but Interactive folks aren’t invited to the creative process. The creatives don’t come up with compelling interactive because the web is an afterthought. The interactive folks don’t come up with compelling interactive because they aren’t trained as creatives or they were excluded from the conceptual development process altogether.

Client services and account planning isn’t taught to think web first and often just assumes someone in the interactive department will handle guiding those decisions. The creatives think someone in the interactive department will do it, too. The interactive department is under the impression the creatives are developing the concepts and wait to be told what to build. The ball gets dropped and interactive ideas are added to the concept at the last minute with little to know strategic tie to the overall concept.

Don’t you find it strangely ironic that while most people in the typical advertising agency these days know little about digital and interactive, not to mention social media, that every advertising execution contains one consistent feature besides the logo: The website address?

Another tactical problem is that social media revolves around content creation. Not only are ad agencies not capable or prepared to create the volume and type of content required to populate blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter, YouTube and more, but social media content must be nimble, quick, conversational and responsive. What little advertising content is produced has to be run through proofing 47 times before it sees the light of day.

Providing content for clients is also antithetical to the philosophical tenants of social media. If I’m engaging in a conversation about a product as a consumer, who is a more trustworthy person to engage with, the brand manager for the product or some account guy at the ad agency that represents the product? The client is always more qualified to be the person or persons engaging with consumers about the brand.

Content creation also doesn’t scale well and is problematic for billing. Let’s say you have 20 brands producing social media content and you hire two people to produce that content. Depending upon the brand, audience and strategy, if they’re doing a good job, they’re producing an average of a blog post, Facebook content, several Tweets and perhaps video, images or some other type of content for each client every day. Can you write 10 blog posts in a day?

And how about this billing scenario: Let’s say a full-time agency employee producing content for a client is working 10 hours per week on that client’s social media efforts. They’re billed out at roughly $75 per hour. At that rate, which is conservative in price and volume, you’re billing $36,000 per year for their services as an agency. At the same time, you can go out and pay free-lance bloggers $25 per post (and that’s on the high end in most circumstances) and produce a similar volume of content for $6,500 per year (a blog post per day, five days per week, which is an aggressive clip for many agencies). How will you answer your client when they call you with a big, “WTF?”

These are the major challenges that face advertising agencies as they transition to owning and embracing social media. There are others.

Solutions

Solving the problems does take time and resources. Education is going to play a major role. In order to expedite the list and open the comments for building blocks to add to these ideas, here is a brief list of what agencies can do to integrate social media into their service offerings and disciplines:

1. Embrace client websites as an opportunity to engage and build relationships with customers
2. Make content portable so customers can consume it where they choose, even on mobile platforms
3. Prioritize search engine optimization. People start their web interactions with search the vast majority of the time.
4. Learn that well-done search advertising and email marketing campaigns have conversion rates that dwarf those of your ROI numbers on billboards and TV spots.
5. Use social media tools internally to collaborate on projects.
6. Use those same tools to collaborate with your clients, extending the educational experience to them.
7. Read industry blogs.
8. Bring in social media consultants and educators to teach everyone, not just your interactive department, how social media can improve their productivity and outputs.
9. Incorporate social and interactive experience into the hiring requirements for client services and creatives.
10. Watch what other brands are doing on the social web.
11. Embrace the enthusiasm of your resident social media advocates by having them teach you social while you teach them strategic thinking.
12. Understand that mass media still has better reach but use that reach to build communities around your brands, driving consumers to brand engagement points through social media.

Now it’s your turn. What else can advertising agencies do to turn the corner on social media expertise? The comments are yours.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The Dangers of Social Media for Ad Agencies? (socialmediatoday.com)
• Social Media for the advertising set (anishvshah.com)

I’ve been getting a lot more books to read lately. Publishers and PR folks, and a few selected authors who are friends, must think reading and reviewing books is part of my job description. The good news is, I like reading the books. The bad news is that I don’t have time to do so at this volume.

However, I have recently finished a couple of books worth letting you know about. And I’m halfway through another I can tell you is worth the price of admission. Instead of writing everything down, I figured I’d talk about them and show them off in an episode of Social Media Explorer TV. Enjoy.

Four Books Worth Reading from Jason Falls on Vimeo.

The books I review in this episode include, 18 Rules of Community Engagement: A Guide for Building Relationships and Connecting With Customers Online by Angela Connor; Connection Generation by Iggy Pintado and Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel. Andy Sernovitz’s new addition to Word of Mouth Marketing isn’t out yet, but you can find out more when the new book hits shelves by visiting his blog at http://damniwish.com.

The previous book reviews I mentioned are for “Trust Agents” by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith and “The New Community Rules” by Tamar Weinberg.