Interview with Bad Pitch Blog Co-Founder, Kevin Dugan, Part II

On Saturday, I posted Part I of my interview with Kevin Dugan, social media strategist and co-founder of one of my favorite blogs, The Bad Pitch Blog. Why did I split this interview into two, you ask? Because I’m greedy and milking it for all it’s worth. Apparently people are more likely to check out a blog if it features someone who they’ve already heard of – who knew?

Anyhow, in case you hadn’t heard of Kevin prior to this interview, I highly recommend that you check out the following: his web site, his personal PR blog, and The Bad Pitch Blog. You can also find him on Twitter (@prblog).

And now for the rest of the questions.

Advertising Age has ranked both of your blogs in the Power 150. What kind of advice would you give to new bloggers (cough cough like Social Media Novice cough cough) about promoting themselves?

My advice is to focus more on quality in blogging than quantity. I know my ranking in the Power 150 would be higher if I posted more frequently. But blogging is a small part of my life. If you have good content, people will not care that you do not update six times a week. And when you do wind up being ranked, do not pay attention to quantitative measurements like these rankings. If you take your focus away from the quality, you’ll wind up losing your spot on the board anyway.

Another good blogging strategy is to send people away from your site and push them to things you think are new and cool. Much like a relationship with the media, that makes you a valuable source and more people will follow your blog.

You were recently involved in a Proctor & Gamble social media experiment to promote the Tide brand and raise money for FeedingAmerica.org, the results of which were a great success. In your opinion, what were some of the most important and successful components of the campaign?

The most important elements of the campaign are that it was an experiment, and it was a kickoff for P&G to learn about social media. From there a lot of people (who were not at the event) weigh in with what was right and wrong about it, but it definitely met the goal of getting their teams engaged in an ongoing learning process.

The other successful element of the event was when each team would gather into smaller groups to try out more ideas more quickly. If something did not work, we moved on and put that group onto an idea that was gaining traction. This allowed us to try more ideas out without losing ground against our competitor teams.

The fact that it made $100,000 in four hours by selling about 3,000 t-shirts is also pretty amazing.

Finally, the most significant question of them all: what do you think of the new Facebook???

I like it. The right hand column is serving up articles that are of interest to my friends. And I think that people are too resistant to change.

Thank you again, Kevin, for answering all of my questions!

Interview with Bad Pitch Blog Co-Founder, Kevin Dugan, Part I

Since you guys seemed to really like the interview with Don, I figured that I would continue with the tradition of interviewing people who know much more than me. Ergo, here is my two-part interview with The Bad Pitch Blog co-founder and social media strategist, Kevin Dugan.

Some background: Kevin Dugan is a veteran marketer who’s been in the business for 17 years, advising clients like General Electric and Xerox. He’s a social media strategist whose PR efforts have garnered six national awards in the last seven years. His blogs Strategic Public Relations and The Bad Pitch Blog have been singled out for awards, including a 2007 Award of Commendation from the Public Relations Society of America. Both blogs are ranked by Advertising Age magazine’s Power 150 — a ranking of the top marketing blogs in the world, something which causes Social Media Novice much envy.

He’s also super-nice in person and did not think me creepy when I introduced myself at the Bad Pitch Blog party in January as a fan and Twitter stalker. And to me, that’s what really counts.

Anyhow, onto the questions!

What would you say to people who are skeptical about the importance of social media in marketing and PR?

I’d suggest they take a look at reports about the significance of mybarackobama.com in the election of President Obama. One key item of note from the online campaign is that only 25 percent of his online support came through that site. The other 75 percent came through various social networks like Facebook where he had established official profiles. If he had not relied on social media, his online campaign would have been one fourth as successful.

On the other end of the spectrum, some say that the traditional press release is dead and that social media releases have taken over – what do you make of it?

When anyone says anything is dead, they are oversimplifying an argument for a good headline. Whether it’s an old school release or a social media release is irrelevant. Got news? We tend to focus so much on format of the news that we push non-news into the marketplace. PR Newswire and Businesswire together put about 2,000 news releases out each day. How many of those are actually newsworthy?

If you had to choose one underrated social media tool or application, what would it be?

Everyone is understandably enamored with video and YouTube. But they’re missing out on photo-sharing sites like Flickr. If we make our communications more visual, they’re bound to be more engaging and more easily understood.

What does your story look like? Go to Flickr and do a search on topics like bailout and AIG. You’ll start to see the momentum that images can bring to a story. And if you have all of them deposited in one spot online, hyperlinked back to you, you’ll have more content on a topic which in turn brings more relevance for search engines.

That’s it for now. Kevin clearly knows his stuff, so stay tuned for Part II, which I’ll be posting in a couple of days.

Interview with Social Media Expert, Don Martelli, Part II

On Wednesday, I posted Part I of my interview with social media expert, Don Martelli. From what I’ve heard (via blog comments and g-chat messages), you seem to really be enjoying Don’s commentary on Web 2.0.  TRAITORS. If you like him so much, why don’t you just go read HIS blog then?

Well, in all honesty, you probably should. He blogs both at The Big Guy and The PR Finish Line.  And  here’s Part II of the interview.

On the mistakes note, what do you think of Facebook friending your boss – yes or no? 

I have a personal rule that I follow that seems to work. I connect with just about everyone I know in some way shape or form on all social media platforms. So yes, your boss would be one of those relationships. The way I see it is that relationships come in three levels.

- First, your very close and trusted friends and family – those folks that you would do anything for. Those folks you want to talk to all the time and those that you want to know what’s happening in their lives.

- Then there’s a second ring of relationships that consist of friends, co-workers and maybe even relatives that you want to keep in touch with but aren’t necessarily interested in everything they have to say.

- Finally, there’s a group of people you work with or are friends with or are associated with that you want to keep tabs on and just be connected to for the sheer reason is that you might need their services and/or opinion at some point in time.

Having a strong network of relationships can pay dividends professionally (looking for a job) and personally (need a plummer). So long story short and as the saying goes, never burn a bridge. 

If you had to choose one underrated social media tool or application, what would it be? 

I would probably have to say LinkedIn. The service is great and it allows you to connect with a variety of professionals from around the world. I feel that it’s under utilized because of the explosion in popularity of Facebook. Also, the iPhone-enabled website site works smoothly and has basically the full functionality of the regular website.

My point here is that LinkedIn is a service that can provide professional results for those looking to sell their services, find a job, get feedback on products or get a sense of what’s happening in various market sectors. I would say that LinkedIn is the more professional version of Facebook. 

What do you see as the future for social media? Do you think that one day astronauts will be tweeting from space? Because that would be awesome.

Not sure about tweeting from space – though I bet it’ll happen at some point. Social media will continue to grow at a pace faster than the general public can keep up with it. Journalists and PR professionals will continue to drive the conversation in the space because they are typically early adopters and the ones currently using it to improve how they do their jobs. The business world will continue to plug in and out of social media where appropriate.

However, the space is really owned by the individual. We, collectively as consumers, will continue to drive the conversation on various levels and demand that companies and organizations listen to our point of view. As a result, the playing field is leveling out. No longer is a blogger just some crazy nut job with an off-beat opinion. Bloggers are targeted as heavily, if not more so, than traditional media by PR people. 

So while the future of social media is pretty much the wild wild west, it has impacted the way PR’s and Journo’s interact and “do business.” It has changed the way companies and organizations interact with consumers. It has changed the way consumers interact with brands. Finally, it has changed the way the world communicates. That process will be refined over the next few years with mobile and video leading the way.

Thank you again, Don, for answering all of my questions!  

Interview with Social Media Expert, Don Martelli, Part I

Social Media Novice cares about this blog and its 3-5 readers. And because I care, I thought it would be a good idea to get someone who actually knows what he’s talking about to come and answer some questions about Web 2.0.  Thus, I present a two-part interview with social media expert, Don Martelli.

Some background: starting out as a journalist for The Boston Globe, today Don is a vice president for leading global PR firm, MS&L, where he manages corporate PR account programs. In addition, he’s also the director of digital communications and creative services. He’s responsible for the MS&L Boston blog, The PR Finish Line. And you can pretty much find him anywhere on the web: Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, and on his own blog, The Big Guy.

Without further adieu, here’s Part I of the interview. Enjoy!

How would you define social media to someone who’s never heard of it before?

Social media connects audiences with similar interests via a variety of internet and mobile based platforms. That’s the technical explanation. The easier, “I know nothing about technology” explanation is that social media connects people, wherever they, whenever they want and to whomever they want to connect to.

Now, this explanation can be tweaked per sector, per industry and per the individual really. For example:

- For a B2B (business to business) company, social media is a tool that empowers their sales force to build stronger relationships with existing and potential customers in a way that is one to one – versus blast emails or direct mail.

- For a non-profit, social media is a tool that helps them with fund raising initiatives.

- For consumers, social media is a way for our voice to be heard by the companies, organizations, politicians, etc., etc. that impact our lives every day.

The gist of all this is that social media is about relationships – building them, making them stronger and making them fruitful for whatever it is you’re doing personally or professionally. Social media is networking on steroids.

What kind of advice would you give to newbies (individuals, businesses, etc.) who want to get in the game?

For individuals I would tell them to try everything. Sign up for as many sites as you can. Explore their functionalities. Explore how you can use them to build and maintain relationships with the people that you trust and want in your life personally and or professionally. For individuals, social media is all about experimentation and sharing experiences.

For businesses, I would tell them first to listen. Then learn. Then engage. Listen to what your audiences are saying about your brand and the space your company does business in. Learn about the technologies that your audiences are using and figure out how you can plug into their conversation. Finally, engage with your audiences in their world. Provide them with content that is meaningful to them. Rely on them for feedback on product development or use social media as a one to one tool for customer service. Social media will help companies and organizations build brand evangelists.

Likewise, what kinds of mistakes do you commonly see them making?

Lots of companies think that by creating a blog, jumping on Twitter and throwing up a few videos up on YouTube is “doing social media.” That’s SO far from the truth. What companies and organizations need to do is first, have a over-arching communications strategy (not just social media, but traditional media, marketing, PR, etc.). Once that strategy is in place, determine what goals you want to reach with the use of social media, i.e. drive 50% more traffic to the website and have customers sign up for a free three-month trial. Finally, implement tactics that are going to help you reach those goals.

The biggest problem I see with social media in business is that too many companies think technology first. There MUST be a strategy in place before you can even think about YouTube, Twitter, Plurk, building an iPhone app, etc.

That’s all for now. As you can see, Don clearly knows his stuff, so I’m going to milk it a little bit and post Part II this weekend (either Friday or Saturday – we’ll see).

Interviews with Social Media Experts

I’d like to start interviewing social media experts for this blog, because I think that it would be really helpful to get the perspective of someone who’s been doing this for longer than I have, with tried and true results. Good interviews would do the following:

- Provide useful advice for social media novices everywhere (or at least the ones who read this blog)

- Provide new ideas for blog posts (sometimes I can’t think of things to write about because duh, I’m a novice)

But, before I start interviewing people (and I do think that there’s a couple of interesting people that I could get), I need good questions to ask them. Here are the ones that I’ve got right now:

What do you consider to be the most important tool in your social media toolkit, and why is it so useful to you?

What advice would you recommend to beginners like myself?

How is social media important to what you do for a living? Can you give me a concrete example?

What mistakes do you commonly see social media novices making?

Here’s where you guys come in (all five of you). I need thoughts, opinions, etc. What do you think of these questions? What kinds of questions would you like to me ask? And who’s on your social media expert wishlist? No guarantees about who I can get, but I can certainly try my hardest.

After all, who could say no to a blog like this?

Note: Don’t answer that.