Last week, I attended the annual American Business Media Top Management Meeting in Chicago. Rather than its typical multi-topic conference approach, the meeting focused primarily on presenting the results from a major industry study and recommendations from the consulting firm Booz & Co.
I found the approach refreshing, more like a deep-dive seminar than the typical panel-led sessions of most conferences (did I just telegraph my opinion of most conferences?). The Booz & Co. study (as reported by Hamsa Ramesha for Northwestern University’s Medill News Service) focused on “pathways to profitability” for B2B media companies in a period when traditional media is shrinking and digital media is expanding.
As ABM member companies are fully involved in events, digital and print media, it was not a Print vs. Web thing — most companies are way past that. This study was more focused on the question: “Based on the reality we’re living in, what must your company become to be successful in five years?”
Perhaps one of the reasons I really enjoyed the study results may be the way in which the findings and recommendations so closely correspond to much of what we at Hammock have been focused on during the past couple of years.
While I plan to write much more about this in the coming weeks, let me preview it by saying that the Booz & Co. study finds that for business-to-business media companies to succeed, they must focus on one of two pathways: Being a company that serves end-users (subscribers, attendees, etc.) or being a company that serves marketers (custom media, marketing services, etc.). While companies can offer services that target both end-users and marketers, Booz & Co. have not yet found an example of how a company has become a leader in both strategies.
It makes sense to me why they have not, but the reasons why that is so are going to be a part of my follow-up posts on the topic. (How’s that for a tease?)
In the meantime, let me say, we at Hammock know exactly what our pathway is: We are going to continue to serve savvy marketers in their efforts to generate more profitable relationships with their customers or members.
Our services will grow to include even more ways to help marketers accomplish that goal via print and all forms of digital and online media. Our services will also grow in ways that will offer marketers the means to measure and manage such programs in ways that clearly provide tangible business benefits to our clients.
We look forward to the continuation of this journey. And I look forward to posting more about it over the coming weeks.
A number of us here at Hammock are real political junkies. We’re all over the spectrum, politically, but we share a love of politics, media, and the crazy things that happen during campaigns and elections.
For a number of years, we’ve shared our political enthusiasm with our clients at the National Federation of Independent Business — the nation’s leading small business association. This year has been no different. Our campaign work with NFIB started months ago, and we’ve worked on a number of election-related projects with them — all designed to raise awareness of small business issues during this campaign. For one fun project, we created an election countdown widget for NFIB.com.
For true political geeks, today’s the best day of the year. We’ll be glued to the computer, cell phone and TV til the wee morning hours. Best of all, growing media use of social networking tools means you can follow the action wherever you are. Rex is keeping a running tally of fun election tools over at the Rexblog.
While many associations are beginning to see the value of how social networks and social media can help them, many still have reservations about Twitter. They might feel comfortable with writing for a blog or posting videos to YouTube, but they continue to question the purpose of a tweet. If associations will take a cue from the business world, they can harness the power of Twitter to meet some of their member communication goals.
Research from the 2008 Cone Business in Social Media Study shows that almost 60 percent of Americans interact with companies on social media sites. The survey findings also revealed:
It’s clear that the majority of Americans have an expectation and a desire to interact with companies through social media online, which helps explain why Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networking sites on the web. In only the last year its traffic has skyrocketed from 533,000 to 2.4 million visitors. To respond to this demand for communication from their customers, Ann Smarty, in her Search Engine Journal Blog, shares examples of how high-profile businesses are using Twitter:
Earlier this year at Hammock, Twitter played a pivotal role in an event website we created for the National Federation of Independent Business for its National Small Business Summit. The social media site included video postings, photo sharing, blogging and knowledge-sharing powered by Twitter. Using Twitter allowed organizers and attendees to post the latest updates and news from the event.
Wonder how you can use the power of Twitter to create a new avenue for communication with your members? Contact us for social media strategies you can benefit from today.
The solution:
Hammock’s custom-designed,
social-media based
event coverage
Hammock has enjoyed working with the National Federation of Independent Business since the early 1990s. NFIB is the nation’s leading small business association, with offices in Washington, D.C, and all 50 state capitals. We work with them to create MyBusiness, their member magazine, and manage NFIB.com, their website.
Every two years, NFIB hosts a National Small Business Summit, a biannual event to explore important policy, business and economic issues facing small business. In the past, we worked with NFIB to create an event website for the Summit, which included news stories from the event. Good, but we wanted to do something more dynamic in 2008.
This year Hammock worked with NFIB to develop a site where small business owners who couldn’t come to Washington, D.C., for the Summit could still participate in the action online. We built and managed a social media site for the Summit with video posting and photo sharing, blogging and knowledge sharing from sessions. We continued the effort post-Summit by developing a digital magazine that is focused on building attendance for the next Summit.
While tools like Flickr, YouTube and Twitter each serve a unique purpose, we’ve found that pulling them together into one interface can often serve your audience best, particularly when you’re sharing information about a single event. While each individual feed is still available, if someone only wants to see the photo updates, for instance, but the event-focused website shows a complete picture of the event — photos, video and all. For many associations, online marketing is still website and email focused. Hammock’s approach is different. We take unique advantage of social media but still provide a central home for all event-related content. If you can’t attend, it’s the next best thing to being there.
[cross-posted at RexBlog]
On Tuesday, amidst my live-blogging of the Future of Business Media Conference in the New York, I took a shot at CNBC for covering the economy in the way the Weather Channel and CNN cover hurricanes: with breathless alarm and Anderson Cooper dressed in rain-gear while panting in a way that makes every puff of wind seem like proof that, yes, this could be the Category 5 we’ve all feared.
At the conference, I heard business-side and news-side people from Dow-Jones, CNBC, Fox Business News, The Economist, BusinessWeek, Forbes.com and Fortune (to name a few) say something to the effect: This is a really difficult time, but this is the story of a lifetime and, well, it’s been good for our ratings (or newsstand sales).
So I guess I should not be surprised that since the business media is covering the “financial crisis” as if it is a weather event, business executives are using a term most associated with weather to describe how they are responding to the “crisis” that is leading to what our experts in the Economy Tracking Center in Miami are believing will be a Category 3, 4 or maybe even 5 recession. Or better yet, a nuclear winter:
Hunker down.
Look at a Google news search for recent uses of the term “hunker down.” This morning, you’ll see it is not only the go-to cliche for covering bad weather (the snows in the northeast) and natural disasters (the earthquake in Pakistan), but it is now the must-use term to describe anything related to how businesses and individuals are reacting to the “bad economy.”
As a business person, I understand the need to be mindful of the context and conditions you face. Certainly, if your customers are sitting on their wallets, you can’t pretend they are about to purchase your wares. Being flexible and prepared for whatever situation you face is the only way to run a business. But by focusing on the hunker down metaphor — especially the “we’re afraid” aspects of the term, there is a strong possibility that the “hunker down” activities are no more than duck-and-cover exercises.
Isn’t hunkering down the panic reaction to a situation that a calm, rational person might discover contains some opportunity? What if you’re in a business that suddenly finds all of its competitors re-trenching and pulling back and hiding in caves — if you hunker down, aren’t missing a unique opportunity to gain market share?
The term hunker down means two things: One is related to preparation for some type of pressure you’re anticipating. The other relates to hiding.
I fear that a lot of business planners are confusing the first type of hunkering down — anticipating and preparing for an economic downturn — with the second type of hunkering down: hiding.
If you’re a company or organization that wants to elevate its awareness — and brand — in the market you serve, the worst thing you can do — in good times or bad — is hunker down — as in, hide. The evidence is overwhelming that companies who market wisely and aggressively while others are hunkering down are the winners during — and after — a recession. For example, according to research conducted at Penn State’s Smeal College of Business during the last recession, “firms entering a recession with a pre-established strategic emphasis on marketing; an entrepreneurial culture; and a sufficient reserve of under-utilized workers, cash, and spare production capacity are best positioned to approach recessions as opportunities to strengthen their competitive advantage.”
Rather than use the hunker down metaphor, winner companies followed another metaphor — one from athletic competition:
“Athletes often choose times of stress to mount attacks: strong runners and bicycle racers may increase their pace on hills or under other challenging conditions,” the authors write. “In a similar vein, proactive marketing includes both the sensing of the existence of the opportunity (a tough hill and fatigued opponents) and an aggressive response (possessing the necessary strength or nerve) to the opportunity.”
A warning, however: The research indicates that it is only when companies are prepared for recessions (like cyclists who train for hills) who benefit. Thus, Apple with its pre-existing marketing and advertising savvy and a mountain of cash, is likely to benefit during this recession, as it has in previous ones, rather than another company whose marketing is inept, even in less challenging times.
Bottomline: Hunkering down is not the metaphor you want to be your guide when planning your marketing efforts for the coming months — especially if your marketing has been working and your competitor seems to be huffing and puffing already. Hunker down wherever you can — say, executive compensation — but use a recession to raise your visibility, not hide.
Hammock Inc. runs SmallBusiness.com, a wiki-based site designed to connect small business owners and their expertise with others. The site covers any topic related to running a small business, and the wiki format lets small business owners contribute their knowledge to the community, as well as learn from the expertise of others.
A long-time feature of SmallBusiness.com has taken on renewed importance recently. We’ve had a small business news wire on the site for some time — we tag the day’s biggest headlines for small business and pull them onto the site. It makes SmallBusiness.com a one-stop shop for small business news and information.
We also offer those headlines via Twitter and RSS. Recently, as businesses large and small have focused intently on the daily economic news, the SmallBusiness.com News Wire has given small business owners an easy way to keep up with the latest financial events that may affect their businesses.
We were delighted to have two websites we created receive “Standard of Excellence” recognition in this year’s WebAward competition. The Hammock.com site and the NFIB National Small Business Summit site both received this honor, announced last week by the Web Marketing Association, the WebAward sponsor.
The Web Marketing Association is a long-term player in recognizing excellence online — this year’s competition was the 12th annual. Sites are judged against other sites in their industry, on design, copy writing, innovation, content, interactivity, navigation and use of technology.
We’re proud of the honor!
One of the reasons we sometimes hear association and corporate marketers use for hesitancy in incorporating Facebook into their communication strategies is their perception that it is comprised primarily of college-age students. That’s correct, however, the trend is clearly in another direction.
According to this analysis of current (September, 2008) users of the social networking service from O’Reilly Media, “With the U.S. now accounting for only about a third of all Facebook users, we are starting to see a gradual shift away from its original demographic of college-age users (18-25): 46% of all users are 18-25 years old, down from 51% in late May. The number of users in the 18-25 segment is growing, but at a slower pace than the other age groups.”
More significantly, Facebook is seeing its fastest growth among teens (13-17) and middle-age professionals between the ages of 35 and 44. Also showing strong growth, but at a smaller rate are the age groups 45-54 and 55-59.
Should be interesting numbers to track.
A few weeks ago, one of my favorite tech bloggers, Louis Gray, wrote a great item regarding the myth of “social media overload.” In it, he listed what he thinks are the types of social media a person needs to be using these days in order maintain his or her identity online and to engage in the conversations taking place on the world live web.
The list, which likely will appear daunting to you if you don’t maintain any of them, is a great roundup. As many of the accounts he mentions work with one another (as in, when you update one, it will notify the other), the task of maintaining them is not as challenging at it may appear.
Most importantly, Louis explains that you don’t need to register for every new version of each one of these categories of services. People like Louis (and me) will sign up for every new one of these we run across, but that’s mainly for research purposes.
Here’s what Louis describes as a “full deck” of social media tools:
1 or more blogs that you manage.
1 or more accounts on an RSS feed reader.
1 or more microblogging identities.
1 or more accounts on a business networking tool.
1 or more accounts on a social network.
1 or more accounts on a service aggregator or lifestream.
(Also helpful: A social bookmarking site, online photo site, music recommendation service, etc.)
While I agree fully with Louis, if I were just starting out doing all of this and looked at this list, I’d probably not start. That’s one of the reasons I recommend people set up a FaceBook account (even if they are outside its core demographics). It is one service that lets you experiment with all the types of features and functions Louis lists. Personally, I have several reasons that FaceBook doesn’t work for me, but when it comes to providing a way to manage your identity, network of connections and a means of expressing yourself online, FaceBook is the benchmark service. Nothing else — and by nothing else, I mean LinkedIn or Plaxo — comes close to packaging together so many different functions and features.
Here’s the deck of social media tools I use most:
RexBlog.com: For the most part, this is what I consider to be my professional and business-related focus (media, technology, conversational & new media, marketing, magazines). However, I do reserve the right to head off into totally unrelated topics at times.
Delicious.com/rexblog: These are sites I bookmark that are related to business-related topics. I sometimes refer to this as my “link blog.”
Hammock.com/rexhammock : My official Hammock Inc. “people page.”
RexHammock.com : Personal passions and random-topic tumble-log.
Twitter.com/r : Stream-of-life commentary in < 140 character posts, and where I “hang-out” online.
Flickr.com/rexblog : Where I post photos.
YouTube.com/rexhammock : Where I post videos.
FriendFeed.com/rexhammock : A “lifestream” (a combined flow) of everything I post anywhere.
Facebook, Linkedin, etc.: I don’t really “express myself” on these and other “social networking” sites, but on most of them, you can find me if you search for my name or the username “rexhammock.”
Bonus advice for those who have several cards from the social media deck: Use the microformat tag rel=”me” (as explained here) when you link between your “full deck” of accounts. Technically, I’m not sure what I just said, but Kevin Marks told me to do it so I do. I don’t know exactly how it works, but the result is this: When you Google my name, all of my different social media accounts show up, even though they have different usernames (rexblog, “r”, rex, rexhammock).
Three thousand members in your Facebook group! You’re following 5,000 on Twitter! You’re well on your way to social media nirvana, right?
Maybe.
The low barrier to entry for most popular social media tools today means that anyone can be in the game. But it also makes it very easy to abuse your audience, perhaps resulting in the opposite of what you intend.