Channel Signal loves the article Real Time, Real Discussion, Real Reporting-Choose Two by Tech Crunch. This, of course, is a take-off on the old adage: “Do You Want it Cheap, Fast or Good. Choose Two.” Here’s the article.

Choose Two of These

Author, Devin Coldewey, explains that there is only so much that a certain channel of media can provide. Twitter is real time discussion. Broadcast media is real-time reporting. (NBC, CNN, ABC radio,etc). Print and other delayed media is delayed reporting and discussion. (NY Times, etc.) All media is quickly evolving, but for the moment we believe these premises basically hold true. The author points out that blogs, in this mix, are the wild cards. They can be real reporting, real-time discussion and delayed reporting and discussion.

Here’s a new perspective on the premise of choosing two.

Twitter- Real-time discussion. Blogs-Thoughtful analysis. Facebook-Customer engagement and storytelling. Choose two.

We believe a company should engage in just two. Concentrate on doing one very well, and support it with the second channel. For example, concentrate on Facebook but support it by broadcasting its content through Twitter. Or concentrate on Twitter but provide in-depth commentary of the conversation flow via a Blog. What channels are chosen should be matched with what best reflects your company’s voice.

Here’s the run-down of the three major Channels.

Twitter. The commitment to real-time discussion is time consuming and its demands are relentless. A company must assign a person to Twitter and that person must not only tweet (and make sense) , but retweet great content, and stay up with the conversation. Zappos has done real-time conversation very well by encouraging all employees to tweet. This strategy is revolutionary because many Zappos employees are broadcasting and a part of the brand’s collective voice. This requires that a company let go, something many brands can’t do. I attribute the Zappos success to the CEO, Tony Hsieh, who has provided the freedom for employees to talk, engage and make mistakes…all in real-time.

Employing Facebook means your employees and your customers are engaging in storytelling. This is really a scrapbook about the customers who have stories to tell about their experiences with a brand’s products and events. The brand needs to provide the products and events…and then encourage consumers to tell their stories on its platform. Time intensive again. A brand must respond to customer stories, encourage them, and, at times, reward great storytellers with product. A brand should assign several employees to this task. They speak for the brand, are encouraging, provide content which sponsors reaction, and customer interaction. Vibram does a great job on its FiveFingers FB page. 70,000 friends and growing. Customers who are now barefoot runners go to this FB page because it is a true community. Vibram FiveFingers

Blogs. Thoughtful analysis. Again, time intensive.  They must, at times be controversial, edgy and logical. It takes work, and guts.  Here’s the problem. Many in senior management have accepted the challenge of a blog for the company website only to find that they don’t have the time to devote to it. Or they don’t have the writing talents or thought processes to engage readers. Consequently, many of these blogs have fallen by the wayside. Or the posts degenerate into a pep rally for the brand, which is boring for everyone. A rock climbing blog we like is this one: rockclimbergirl. Sara Lingafelter does a good job of covering the climbing landscape and occasionally takes on tough topics with an honesty that is refreshing.

Why not include YouTube,Vimeo or the other video platforms as channels?  Because they can be easily incorporated into the other three major platforms.

So, choose  two. Real-time discussion. Storytelling by your customers. Thoughtful analysis. Why no more than two? Because most brands engage in all three but invest the human resources to do a good job on just one, with another channel as support.  And one channel normally fits the brand voice the best. Engaging in a second platform will push and pull viewers to the primary communication channel.

At times I read an article that is so compelling that I read it twice to make sure that I understand all of the information. Below is just such an article. It needs no introduction other than to write that it addresses our country and its economic pickle. Mark Anderson is a very smart man.

Back to Reality

Recently, during Channel Signal presentations, brands have shown a great interest in accumulating Influencers. They ask:

How do we find them?
How do we attract them?
And how do we make them ours?

The thinking goes that brands can attract 30-50 Influencers and convert them into messengers who relay brand propaganda to their readers. It will be viral, powerful, and increase sales. ”We will have a new salesforce.”

Channel Signal has accumulated a list of Influencers in the Outdoor Industry. We have measured each of these Influencers by the:

• number of followers on Twitter
• quality and frequency of their blogs
• Facebook quality and number of friends
• And finally the quality of their content and it’s viral power.

And we found that these Influencers were not retweeted or mentioned in Facebook or their blogs passed around anymore than anyone else. Yeah, they were read and many have RSS feeds into desktops, but the “influence” was not there.

So, what does cause a message to take off virally?

The power of the message. And that message can be posted by anyone, come from anywhere, at anytime. If that message is interesting, unique, provides a different perspective on a topic, or is a strong personal account…it will get passed around. It may even explode.

Here’s the problem, after it explodes it disappears. And that’s a major problem because brands are trying to “bag” Influencers thinking that these messages come from them and that there is staying power. There isn’t.

And here’s the other problem: building marketing programs around messages and Influencers is no good.

Messages + Influencers= No
Conversations + Relationships= Yes

Brands can not bottle messages and influencers, nor can they broadcast their message on the Internet with any sort of power.

Leroy Stick, the guy behind the BPGlobalPR Twitter phenom…(for those of you who don’t know, this site made fun of BP during the oil spill, attracting 187,000 followers)…he says,

“So what is the point of all this? The point is…forget your brand. You don’t own it because it is literally nothing. You can spend all kinds of time and money trying to manufacture public opinion, but ultimately that’s up to the public, isn’t it.”

What can brands do?

Produce messaging and content that is interesting, gets viral play on a continual basis…and then follow that up with conversations.

And with those conversations you build relationships.

And some of those relationships will be gold if the relationship is real. The consumer talks and writes…and genuinely believes in the brand. And the brand continues to produce product that reinforces that belief.

This is hard work. And brands will need to turn their marketing departments upside down.

Brands must build many relationships, and they will come and go. A company should organize itself to converse with many people in different channels about its products and initiatives. Then the social media effort will be a success.

So far, brands have only hired a “social media specialist”….whatever that is. And have continued to broadcast their messages through the new channels.

And into the wind the messages go.

Never to be heard again.

That’s not surprising. What is…is why they are dropping out.

So, Facebook is boring, other websites are cooler, my friends don’t use Facebook, and I’m tired of keeping up with all the chatter.

This comes on the heels of Prince saying the Internet is so yesterday, and refusing to sell his latest album online. It will come out only on CD and be released with chosen newspapers. Actually, a pretty good strategy. Newspapers need subscribers and they will benefit. Prince is already benefiting due to the publicity. In an interview with the Mirror in Great Britain he says:

“The internet’s completely over. I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can’t get it.

“The internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good.

“They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.”

So, guess what? The Internet is established, large, and now the new whipping boy. Many teens are moving away from Facebook and running away from MySpace. Rock stars are having all sorts of trouble with YouTube over music rights. And now Prince.

This is why it is critical for companies to establish an online beachhead. I don’t care how big you are and how much money you have, a company must focus on bringing good content to the right platform,  and stick with it.

And they should ignore the day-to-day sturm and drang of the Internet.

Facebook will most certainly struggle to hang on to its mammoth user base…over 400 million people. MySpace is struggling to stay alive. YouTube is so huge users have trouble finding what they are looking for. LinkedIn and others will work to occupy the business community space.

And now we have FourSquare, Gowalla, and about 30 others who are going after the “location” space, where users tell other users where they are, what to order, what is fun, etc. And it is maturing into a play for the “game” and “location” space.

The Internet is maturing and  fragmenting.

And the challenge I see for companies is to understand where your voice is best suited and then provide content that builds the brand presence.

At Channel Signal we comb through a lot of data. And we can tell you where the money is being wasted or well spent. We do monthly analyses of both online performance and customer reviews. Online performance is where it becomes painfully obvious. On the good side…retweets of strong content, blogs getting virally passed around. Growing followers. In short, content is getting read, shared, and building the traffic base.  The other side of the coin…companies who use platforms as sales sites. And the result? Tweets that are meaningless. No retweets. Blogs that have no viral energy and contribute nothing to building the brand.

Just because it is a platform that has proved useful for some brands does not mean it is right for you. Teens will come and go. And Prince’s music will be online in a New York minute…and he will make money from it.

The Internet is now too big to fail. Too big to ignore. And too big not to be picky about where you put your messages.

Build your beachhead and populate it with content that improves the lives of customers using your gear.

And Prince is right about one thing. Much of it is crap.

Well, it’s not.

Here’s the route.

Map

As mentioned before this is not the best route. Highway is busy. This lady, Lauren Rosenburg, was hit by a car, apparently while trying to get across Deer Valley Drive.  She was hit by Patrick Harwood. The lawsuit is Rosenburg verse Harwood…and Harwood and Google are both, apparently,  being sued for north of $100,000.

As you can see in this screen shot, Google clearly marks that this map is in beta and it may not have sidewalks. Take a look.

Google outlines in yellow that this is in Beta and please pay attention. “Maybe missing sidewalks or pedestrian paths.”

So, does this warning appear on mobile devices. Yep. Appears on iPhone. The warning, “use caution” appears on the Blackberry.

Now, did the warning appear in the winter when Ms. Rosenburg called up the information? Well, I read a blog from Danny Sullivan on Search Engine Land and he said that when he tested the Google Maps it did not appear.Search Engine Land

Park City is a ski town. Sometimes in the winter you can’t get anywhere because of 3 feet of new snow. Can’t get your car out of the driveway. Can’t walk anywhere.

It’s totally great!

So, I feel sorry for Ms. Rosenburg that she got hit. Not good. And maybe the warning information was not on her mobile.  Don’t know.

However, as we all use new technology such maps on mobile devices we have to get better at reading what is displayed. Can’t just look for what you want. Have to look at the entire screen to see if there is information that is critical. Hiking in Southern Utah and looking at a Garmin and the GPS has a warning about slot canyons flooding this time of year. Gotta see that. Really important.

I suspect all of us, me included, get in a hurry and miss information in emails, on mobiles, on Skype, etc. etc.

As an example, I pushed the publish button on this blog too early, and then had to edit on the fly. What a bonehead.

What is important is that when we call up information from the web, we look, and read, and consider.

Missing a piece of information could be important. Very important.

And if its not there, well, that may be a different story. One that should be quickly rectified by the search engines.

In a split second a perfect game was lost. 27 batters up. 27 batters out. That bad call ruined it.

Now had Joyce been a high-powered CEO or politician, he most likely  would have admitted no mistakes saying…”I saw it like I saw it.” And he would have refused to talk about it. Or his spin doctors would have gone to work to rewrite history. Or his lawyers called in to assess liability.

But Jim Joyce is a real man. He saw the replay, admitted he made a mistake, and then went to apologize to Galarraga.

What happened next is heart-warming.

People have come out of the woodwork to express their admiration for how Joyce has handled the situation. Detroit Tiger fans greeted him warmly the next day, a day in which he was umping again. And Galarraga handed Joyce the line-up card. Joyce wiped away a real tear. And then patted Galarraga on the back.

Both men and the Tiger fans have come out of this mistaken call with heads held high. Galarraga for the way he has handled the disappointment. Detroit fans for being classy. And Joyce for having the guts to say, “I blew it.”

Congratulations to both men, a pitcher and an ump, for being role models.

And here’s to the fans…for knowing it.

Yesterday morning I read that the CEO of BP, Tony Hayward said, “I want my life back.” I immediately thought, well, hundreds of thousands of Americans living on or near the Gulf Coast want their lives back too. And so does the pelican pictured above. However, the difference here is Mr. Hayward  goes back to a life of luxury..no worries about money, transportation, pensions, education for the kids, retirement. And now he longs to go back to a life of high profits and some ordinary corporate problems.

Meanwhile, the average American living on the Gulf Coast worries about; food, shelter,  retirement, education for the kids, the cost of travel. Oh, and one more thing…how they will make a living to support all of the above.

And for the wildlife, they are simply fighting for their lives, and they don’t know why.

For me, Mr. Hayward should never get his life back. He earns this huge amount of money for just this kind of crisis. And he is failing to earn it.

BP is suffering from a lack of leadership…leadership that its stockholders paid for. And every CEO should take note. You make the big money because when it comes time to lead, you do.

And that brings me to President Obama. His first test of leadership was the health insurance crisis and he rallied to lead. However, it was a slow developing issue where he and his advisors had plenty of time to analyze, plan, and act.

Well, the Gulf oil spill is different. And the President and his administration have failed. He did not get out in front of the issue, and he will now, never get in front of it. Quick decisive leadership was needed, and he did not have the mentality or the tools to get it done.

Which brings me to this.

Where was his vaunted new media people who were brilliant in his campaign? They collected hundreds of millions of dollars from citizens giving five, ten bucks a throw. And then engaged them by using new media. In real-time. Brilliantly.

Don’t you think if the Obama administration had a strong new media monitoring program in place that they would have picked up the oil worker tweet from the Deep Horizon rig saying, “I think we have a leak bigger than a thousand barrels a day”. Or a tweet from a first responder saying, “geeze, this is a mess.” And that information would then have gone directly to the decision makers in the administration.

The great thing about new media is you hear it from citizens on the scene, and not have it spoon-fed to you by a large corporation trying to control the information, and therefore the crisis.

New media monitoring would have put our federal government ahead of the issue, and provided leverage to deal with BP.

And new media monitoring would have allowed BP to understand that information was leaking out, and that, like the spill, it can not be contained for very long. Perhaps they would then have been more transparent.

New media would have kept both BP and the administration honest.

Meanwhile, BP continues to flail. It has now hired a Bush Administration official to head the public relations effort. Whew! I really don’t know where to begin. Anne Womack-Kolton, the former campaign press secretary for Vice President Dick Cheney is now in charge of the PR for the largest oil spill in history. She worked for and defended a secretive Vice President who had close ties with the oil industry and a distaste for the flow of information to the press.  This move is the opposite of “transparency”.

Last night, June 2nd,  at the White House, the Obama’s hosted Sir Paul McCartney who will receive the George Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. Stevie Wonder, the Jonas Brothers, and others entertained a chosen list of guests.

The President should be leading the clean-up effort. Leading from the Gulf Coast. At times, covered in oil, fishing pelicans out of the Gulf…along with the citizens down there.

Instead, his leadership is covered in oil…and the American people will not forget this, the deep water drilling that caused it, or the large corporation who insisted it was safe.

Just read a short blurb by John Porcaro on WOMMA asking the question, Is Your Brand Talkable?  John is the CEO of Porcaro Consulting.

“First, your brand, product, or service has to be worth talking about. What is it that makes your brand remarkable? Different? Better? Does your brand resonate with your customer? Does it make their life easier? More fun? More interesting? If your brand isn’t worth mentioning, it won’t be.”

Many brands are moving into the new media space where socialization of the brand means discussing it. And that means writing and talking about it.

Here’s the thing. If a brand just makes and sells products and has no brand personality past that, then consumers are finished talking about you after they talk about your product. Let’s say you make a great backpack. And that backpack goes along on a personal adventure. The pack becomes a part of that adventure during the event. And it is used and thought of fondly…for awhile. However, if that same brand would have somehow been a part of the adventure other than just the product, then the brand would live on.

How? Learn about the upcoming adventure on Facebook or Twitter. Contact the consumer. Give her tips about the pack, packing, and necessities on the Continental Divide Trail. Hook her up with a quick conversation with one of  the brand’s athletes for further information.

Be a part of the adventure.

Do you think this woman hiker will talk about the brand before, during, and long after the adventure is over?

Uhhhh, yeah.

Another way to get into the conversation is to sponsor events, which many brands do. However, many do not realize that the key to success is the personal touch. Learn who is talking about your event during the lead-up, using new media. Have your brand team members contact them. Thank them. And arrange to meet them at the event. Provide a little product before the run, hike, climb, or SUP event.

The smiling faces of one of your employees is the smiling face of your brand. Leverage this. Trust your employees. And get them showing genuine interest in consumers. And that will get consumers talking.

Valerie Plame, the CIA operative, who was outed by the Bush administration is a mother of two and wife to Joe Wilson, a former ambassador for the United States. When asked how no one knew she was a spy, she replied that she simply showed interest in the other person, and asked many questions about them.

Ummmm.

Brands showing genuine interest in consumers. Listening. Engaging. And then talking.

To make your brand talkable, make it interesting.

And to make it interesting, you must show interest.

In the event. In the participant. In the customer.

And you find them, in advance, by searching new media.

This film could be about many brands that are trying to move into new media. They only  broadcast their messages, like robots. And now they know they must engage with consumers, but frankly they don’t really know how.

And in a way, when Channel Signal examines Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Yelp, etc…we see  an awkwardness by many of these companies. And that is beautifully reflected in the first part of this film.

“I’m Here” is about two robots and they find life. For me, the telling moment in the film comes when a woman on a bus bench sees our female robot driving a car. She screams at her “You can’t drive that car. You can’t do that!”

Well, brands and retailers, you can “do that”. You can let go. You can loosen your grip on the communication loops. You can listen. And you can respond, through your people.

“I’m Here” was sponsored by Absolut. Brilliant move. Virally the film has exploded carrying Absolut along for the ride.

Here’s the trailer.

There are viewing times for the movie, which is clever.  So, go to YouTube, find the movie and watch for the arrow, and then click on it.  And take a look how Facebook was used.

Ain’t it great. Anything is possible when there is a great story.