The spill in the Gulf of Mexico started as a news report of an explosion and eleven men missing. Only one sentence was dedicated to the oil spillage…saying only that a tiny amount was leaking.

It has now grown and threatened the coastline of several states. It is telling a story much larger and much more damning to the shrimpers and the oil people.

Here’s an example…reported by the New York Times.

“About 35 endangered sea turtles have washed up dead on beaches along the Gulf of Mexico since Sunday, sowing fears that they were done in by the growing oil spill.

But so far scientists have found no connection between their deaths and the spill. Autopsies indicated that the turtles had ingested no oil.

It is now suspected that shrimpers out at sea before the April 20 rig explosion and spill caught the turtles in their nets, which can suffocate them.

The A.P. reports that federal fisheries investigators are looking into whether shrimpers were responsible.”

So, the oil spill exposes other abuses.

And is social media having a hay day with the suspected killing of endangered species in pursuit of the dollar? Yep. Search for “sea turtles” on Twitter and it is all about turtles and the oil spill.

Why is the sea turtle episode exploding on Twitter? Because it is the sidebar that puts a new spin on the story. There are pictures. And people are becoming emotionally attached.

And this whole business is dirty.

Our dependence on oil is dirty… due to carbon loading.

According to the University of California, every car is responsible for 1.28 tons of carbon per year.  A nation with five percent of the earth’s population consumes about 23 percent of the world’s oil output. And we are currently exceeding the regenerative ability of the earth to sustain us. Today we occupy 145% of the earth’s regenerative ability.

The extraction is dirty, and dangerous.

According to the Associated Press, the U.S. Minerals and Management Service is developing regulations aimed at preventing human error, which it identified as a factor in many of the more than 1,400 offshore oil drilling accidents between 2001 and 2007.

Sea turtles are now proving that commercial shrimpers are dirty.

And this story has so many sidebars, many which are still unknown,  that it will be tweeted about, facebooked about, and blogged about …for years.

There will be more pictures of wildlife, total victims.  And millions more new media comments.

There will be villains. And more new media comments.

There will be innocent human victims. And more new media comments.

And my point?

There is no new media strategy that can solve this, next time. This is a national tragedy.

Pundits are already coming out and writing that BP didn’t handle this the right way. Well what is the right way? Set up a war room and have the best minds churn out news?  Stay on top of the issues? Be the first to break the stories…before the media?  Be transparent? Be honest? Be responsive to new media questions?

Won’t help.

Again, this is a tragedy and one that is unfolding before our eyes. And new media is a part of delivering the story and the millions of opinions surrounding it.

BP better concentrate on fixing the problem and cleaning up the mess. And pay for all of it. After nearly two decades of screwing around with the legal system, Exxon got exactly what it wanted: a Supreme Court that reduced punitive damages from $2.5 billion to $500 million. According to reports, that is just a week’s profit for Exxon.

This time we should put the big hurt on BP. 10 billion. 20 weeks of profit. Make them howl. And the judicial branch should level the fine and walk away. That will get the attention of the other oil companies.

The Obama Administration would be wise to forget about the deals they made with the Republicans to get the health care bill passed…and kill the off-shore oil drilling initiative. DOA. Period.

Shrimpers…stop killing endangered species. You might have been innocent victims, but you sure aren’t now.

This is a big story of our time. And because of new media, we are all involved. Writing. Discussing. Taking action. Being disgusted.

And there is no strategy that will lessen the impact for BP.  It is caught in a huge unfolding story.  And the federal government is caught in the same story. So are the shrimpers. And so am I. And so are you. BP is just a spoke in the massive feeding machine connected to our lifestyles.

We in new media can pontificate all we want about this national disaster, but until we view the future with sharp, clear-eyed vision and determination…expect bigger environmental disasters.

And expect our free fall into the future to continue with the ground approaching at an ever increasing rate.

We have met the enemy, and it is us.

Channel Signal has been bombarded lately with noise. Now, part of our job is to filter noise and there is much to filter: worthless posts like “Just on my way to work. What a beautiful day. Wearing my brand sandals.” or “50% discount here on all brand product. Buy. Buy. Buy.”

I would say of the 400-600 posts a day that we receive for each of our clients about 80% is noise.
And when we send it through our second “human” filter we filter out about 80% of that and deliver only about 20% of that to our clients.

Recently, there is a new type of noise, and it is just confusing the issue. This noise is all about the new software coming online to help companies sort through new media, help them develop content, and then help deliver content. Soon, there will be software that will write the content for you and all the brand needs to do is put its name here.

This improved software will help a company make new media easier, faster, more efficient and cost-effective.

Don’t believe it.

It’s just like the great Smith-Barney ads used to proclaim at the end of its thirty-second spots.
“We make money the old-fashioned way. We earn it.”

And you must. Brands must earn the respect of the Influencers in new media. Must earn a loyal following. Must earn a strong community. Sure it starts with the product; however, it doesn’t end there. That is only the beginning.

It’s the communication and feedback loops that you must now build. And yes, software packages can help; however, the basics can not be ignored. Here are some of the basics.

1. Pick just one channel and do it well. Not just by getting yourself up on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, and Flickr…and saying, “well, that’s that. Let’s talk about our product and see if we sell more.”

2. Sorry about this, but it needs to be said…because this is the phrase, “shit in, shit out.” Searching and receiving raw new media data, and not filtering and accurately assigning sentiment means a brand is getting crap. And now crap is being analyzed. And the analysis is crap. And management decisions are being made based on crap.

Channel Signal delivers “finished” data and this is data that is relevant and worth consideration by our clients. We then analyze that data, and measure it. Now management (and its pr/marketing partners) have clean data, a clean report, and good information to consider.

3. Engage. I come from a family of talkers. My Mom always used to say, “well Paul, if you aren’t listening and talking, then how will you know what others are thinking?” Brands must first listen, and then talk. Engage with good content, and then enter the conversation that it sponsors. And if doesn’t sponsor any talk, then change what you are writing about. Get them talking.

Publish and talk. Don’t be shy. New media is not the place for wall-flowers.

And, ignore the noise. An old African saying, “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.”

Take this in bites. Choose a channel. Concentrate on it. Make it successful. And then use that knowledge to build.

And believe that this will be hard work. Building content that attracts a strong community starts with knowing your voice, your audience, and what they want. And that’s where “finished” data comes in. It is the feedback loop that allows you to accurately gauge, and correct.

It’s your compass in a whacky world.

As best as we can tell it started in 2008 with a call from Timberland to all people in social media encouraging them to make a video about their participation in a new program called Earthkeepers. The best videos would qualify for Timberland gear. Here it is.

And although many good videos were made, you’ve got to take the good with the bad.

And this was a recent response to the video you just viewed.

When brands launch a video promotion they should keep in mind a couple of things in new media.

1. You have no control of the content or the distribution. And distribution is the killer. Almost everything that gets produced for a promotion will be put up on YouTube. And if a “parody” spot on your brand takes off, the promotion ballon was just injected with lead.

2. The long tail of new media. This stuff does not die easily. It stays on YouTube a long long time. And all it takes is for somebody to discover a negative spot, send it around, and you have a new problem born by an ancient promotion.

Brands should stop believing that all people march to the same positive tune of a new promotion and its slug line.

Oh, and the slug line used in this campaign?

Take It All On.

A few days ago I got a call from a lawyer who has ties with Sea World. Not direct ties but close enough to be concerned.

So the conversation goes like this…
Lawyer: “Are you aware of what happened yesterday at Sea World?”
Me: “Yup. Read about it.”
Lawyer: “I want to suggest that they call you because this is an incident that could blow into a crisis. They need Channel Signal to monitor this.”   Me: “Thanks. We would love to help. Based on a little searching around it looks like its heading into crisis now.”

Well, we didn’t get the call, and the message was, thanks we have it covered.
Good for them. Hope it goes well.

It’s not.
All major news outlets carried it. Predictable. Major animal rights sites were on the offensive. Predictable. And Sea World and animal entertainment advocates were on the defensive. Predictable.

And here are the unanswered questions which brought heat to the debate:

1. Why was this whale in question (Tilikam) involved in the shows after killing other people?
2. Is the use of predators for entertainment just a game of chance?
3. Why did the shows resume so quickly.
4. And are these predators merely prisoners for fun and profit?

Pick your side and pull out your firearm.

CNN sponsored a raging screaming match between an orca trainer and an avid environmentalist. Other news talk shows followed. Actors and actresses got involved. PETA has set up a Free Willy Facebook Site and already has over 6,000 followers.

Twitter, Facebook, and the blogsphere lit up about the poor handling of the situation.

And standing in the middle of this traditional and social media storm is Sea World.

A couple of things to remember here.

When an incident blows into a crisis, immediately start monitoring…on both sides of the issue.
1. Learn what is critical to answer and answer those questions…rapidly.
2. Address and even attack false statements rapidly.
3. And have people available 24/7 for all questions from all quarters.
4. And don’t stop listening, and responding until the crisis is past…well past.
5. And no attitude.

Now, I realize that, according to reports, the Sea World team is tight and losing a trainer to another family member (Tilikam) has to be devastating.

But, that is why you bring in a communications team that knows what they are doing. To protect the Sea World team. Provide guidance. Get to the facts. And appoint an authentic Sea World spokesperson.

And some of these people on the communication team should have news training because first and foremost this is a news story. The facts…that’s what reporters want. And if they smell that facts are being withheld, then they will dig harder and look for angles.

And reporters will then report those “angles” and that information will be picked up by the blogs. And mis-information becomes fact.

Sea World finds its very business model now being questioned. Will parents risk a show knowing that something terrible could happen? Will people  find it detestable that these carnivores are kept in tanks for life, when in the wild they travel over 100 miles a day in open ocean?  And is this just about money, since the show opened 3 days after the tradegy?

Free Willy has taken on a whole new meaning for Sea World.

And some of this could have been avoided with a communication strategy laid out in advance. And a new key to that strategy is 24/7 monitoring of the crisis so that opinions are quickly uncovered, and then covered with facts.

Before Social Media, you could count on a crisis having a limited shelf-life. After all, the media had new things to cover and its attention was taken elsewhere.

With Social Media, every crisis has a long tail. So, Sea World and its handlers will be dealing with blogs, tweets, YouTube, and Flickr for the forseeable future. And with every new fact about the story will be thousands of opinions.

“We’ve got it covered.”

Clearly, Sea World underestimated “it”.

And what it would take to “cover” it.

eMarketer reports that, “While Q3 2009 data showed e-mail on top for content-sharing, February 2010 information from social optimization platform Gigya points to Facebook as the Web’s top social sharing hub.”

Facebook continues to grow because users believe that the content is richer due to photos, video, and articles, all  being easily shared.

It is also more personal. Protected. And intuitive.

As for Twitter? The noise continues. I use it, but am frustrated, at times, with the amount of nonsense on it.

“What a beautiful sunrise!”

“Forgot how much I liked my banana nut muffin!”

“Getting ready for a jog. Ugh!”

I realize that, obviously, many people are interested in this slice of lifestyle. Just not me.

I use and like Twitter when interesting articles are posted. Or my attention is brought to a new hot topic.

However, it looks like many agree, that Facebook is less noise and more of the content that interests the “fans”.

In 2010 the whole world will be talking. Discussing everything on many different platforms. And now that new media has shifted to real- time the speed of those discussions accelerate…greatly.

In the middle of December Google announced that real time results will be displayed from Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. This means that you, literally, can follow an event or issue on a minute-by-minute basis.

Let’s go back and look at the Motrin situation. In about 24 hours after that television commercial broke, mommy bloggers were aggregating in mass. And over that weekend while the Motrin execs were on the golf course, the mommy bloggers were scaling the walls of the corporate castle. On Monday morning, the execs were being greeted with a crisis. The great unwashed were inside the castle walls.

Again, that happened in 24 hours. That will be nothin’ compared to what will happen in real time. Take 24 hours and bring it down to 2. Here’s an fictitious example:

Let’s say that an outdoor company makes baby clothing and a Mom sees that a rash has developed on the back of her child. After a couple of minutes of investigation she determines that it is the baby shirt that is causing the problem. Onto Twitter she goes.

Tweed: My baby has a rash on her back. Has anybody seen this? Think it could be the BRAND shirt.

( 1 minute later.) Response Tweet: OMG! I had that same think happen two days ago. And my baby wore that brand.

( 90 seconds after the first Tweet) Another Response Tweet: Me too. My child has a rash and we have the same shirt!

In the real-time world…right here is where the BRAND needs to both catch the conversation, and react to it. The BRAND can not wait until somebody sees it on Google Alert because Google Alert may wait an hour before posting. And then it gets circulated within the company, and perhaps a day passes before action is considered, or taken.

Ian Capstick writing in Media Style Blog writes . “Don’t get me wrong. I use Alerts. They are useful. Helpful even.  But it’s important to note the system is unrefined, often missing data and is only one part of a comprehensive listening program you should be undertaking. If Google Alerts are your primary online listening tool; you are missing information.”

Back to the rash incident. So, a whole day goes by while a BRAND gathers information, that info is distributed, decision-makers engage and action is finally taken. The Rash Incident may have grown into an Issue…or even a Crisis. And if a Crisis…a recall may be the result.

Why? Because in two hours…a hundred Moms might be tuned into and engaging in the conversation. And within 3 hours a thousand Moms might be in the conversation. 24 hours…well. I just don’t know how big it could get.

Andy Beal writing in his blog, Seeking Alpha, believes…

“Twitter serves as a real-time information network powered by people around the world discovering what’s happening and sharing the news…In the new year, Twitter will begin supporting a billion search queries a day. It will be delivering several billion tweets per hour to users around the world.”

Several billion tweets per hour.

And Google and Bing? Well, Google is handling around 300,000 to 500,000 million searches a day.

Google and Bing can not keep up with the volume of Twitter. Beal further reports, “and that is why Google ‘alerts’ for breaking news items show up 10 – 45 minutes earlier on Twitter or monitoring packages/systems.”

So, there is new velocity in social media.

With real-time search…brands have even less time.

The search must be thorough. The response quick. And a strategy in place to handle Incidents so they do not become Issues.

All in, almost, real-time.

1. Choose only communication channels that best match your goals.
2. If the news turns sweet or sour, monitor and measure across your channels to find the real issue. Only then do you respond with the corporate answer.
3. Engage when the news is good, engage more when the news is bad.

From Wikipedia-Astroturfing is a word in English describing formal political, advertising, or public relations campaigns seeking to create the impression of being spontaneous “grassroots” behavior, hence the reference to the artificial grass, AstroTurf.

And flogging is a new word that is basically fake blogging.

Astro-turfing and flogging are mirages with fake authors, intended to mislead, and written to create a false impression of popularity.

I had a long conversation with new media lawyer Andrea Anderson of Holland & Hart recently about flogging and astroturfing. She made an excellent point. If a company hires floggers or astroturfers to seed the blogosphere with false impressions of popularity, and if one of those authors states a fact that is false, then the company sponsoring the campaign is liable for false advertising.

Companies should drop the use of these people, authentically engage in the online conversation, and attract solid influencers who have real followers for a reason. They are good. They know their facts. And they provide great information.

Astroturfing and flogging should disappear. But alas…as long as there are bad marketers we will have to live with bad marketing.

Art Smith at Ogden Newspapers

Recently I have been involved in some great email exchanges with writers that I admire. Two of them are Michael Hodgson and Kris Versteegen. Well, the point was made that traditional media was not dying, just morphing to new platforms.

Let’s take a look at the facts. Nielsen reported this the first of the year.

Nielsen Online, a service of The Nielsen Company, today reported a 16 per cent year-on-year increase in unique visitors to the top 10 newspaper Web sites, growing from 34.6 million unique visitors in December 2007 to 40.1 million in December 2008.

Here’s the Nielsen list for August:

NYTimes.com — 14,277,000 — (-27%)

washingtonpost.com — 11,565,000 — 29%

USATODAY.com — 9,761,000 — (-6%)

Daily News Online Edition — 9,131,000 — 112%
LA Times — 8,938,000 — 2%

Wall Street Journal Online — 8,341,000 — (-4%)
New York Post — 6,535,000 — 32%
Boston.com — 5,274,000 — 8%
SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle — 5,092,000 — 13%
Chicago Tribune — 4,442,000 — 14%

Politico — 3,401,000 — 47%
NJ.com — 2,926,000 — 41%
Atlanta Journal-Constitution — 2,747,000 — (-31%)
The Houston Chronicle — 2,569,000 — (-3%)
Philly.com — 2,500,000 — 47%

Chicago Sun-Times — 2,480,000 — (-6%)
Newsday — 2,428,000 — (-28%)
The Sacramento Bee — 2,426,000 — 84%
Orlando Sentinel — 2,089,000 — 49%
The Seattle Times — 2,040,000 — 55%

Azcentral.com — 1,999,000 — 41%
MercuryNews.com — 1,871,000 — 16%
DallasNews.com – The Dallas Morning News — 1,832,000 — (-12%)
MiamiHerald.com — 1,829,000 — 36%
The Washington Times — 1,803,000 — 56%

tampabay.com — 1,758,000 — 24%
KansasCity.com — 1,708,000 — 59%
Baltimore Sun — 1,697,000 — 7%
Star Tribune — 1,662,000 — 8%
Detroit Free Press — 1,648,000 — 9%

Look at those numbers. And the numbers are also big when it comes to good magazines, and vertical publications that offer content online.

Why? Because most people want their news and serious information delivered by reputable brands. They know that journalists who work for those brands dig for the story, present both sides, and can back up what they write with facts. Editors make sure of that.

We see this on Channel Signal all the time. We have a Channel called Online Traditional Media, and the traffic is almost always much larger then any blog. Online Traditional Media is not dead. If anything it is growing. And as it morps it will get healthier as it develops a new system of payment.

I believe that people do want the facts, especially when first trying to understand an issue.

So, media employing professional journalists (to escape titles for a moment) will find a way to make money. Consumers understand the value and will pay for the privilege of solid information.

And we need debate and dialogue that is filtered with facts and reason. Spewing just isn’t working for me anymore.

Recently I got this research and statement from Gartner Consulting.

Media and advertising follow consumer attention, and consumer attention has shifted massively toward social media on the Internet. Social media currently reaches nearly half of the U.S. population, and usage has nearly quadrupled during the past two years, according to comScore Media Metrix.

Now, to be clear Gartner defines social media as all blogging and social networking. All interactive media. That means all blogs, social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and all online traditional media like the New York Times and CNN. No matter. It is still a staggering stat.

Welcome to the new Sales Floor. It is the largest in the world. If Media Metrix is right then over 150 million people are on this sales floor, just in the United States alone.

150 million people buying, trading, reviewing recent purchases, talking with others about future purchases, talking about brands, praising or complaining about a brand’s customer service, discussing a brand’s message, passing information back and forth about pricing, reading the news of the day and expressing opinions. Feedback loops everywhere.

The architecture of this Sales Floor would be like combining all the major cities of the world into one road map.

And it is growing larger.

And every one of these people wants to be treated as an individual.

Media and advertising follow consumer attention.

If you want to grow your business, you should follow and engage this mass of consumer attention while learning to treat each as an individual.

We have a lot of work to do.