There is nothing worse than being in a situation where your pocketbook is at the mercy of experts in an area that you know very little about.  I just got back from a car-repair shop in Minneapolis, where I had to get my car towed due to its reluctance to start when I turned the key in the ignition.

I know nothing about cars, and car-repair shops are scary for that reason.  I cringed when the guy at the desk told me that it might cost $100 for the mechanic to simply open the hood (the coat hanger that I was previously using to open the hood fell out and was rendered unusable).  Then there was the fact that the car wouldn’t start up.  Oh boy, was I in for it!

Thankfully, AAA took care of my towing expenses, or else the final $174 bill would have been much higher.

As I was waiting for my car to get fixed, the dollar signs painfully whizzing past my brain, I had a moment of clarity.  Some of my clients probably feel the same way when they ask me to fix a website issue or build a website from scratch.  That is, my clients mostly know next to nothing about what it takes to build a website. That’s not a dig on them, quite the contrary.  We can’t expect to know everything about everything – that’s what experts are for!  So, we hire a mechanic to fix our car, a web guy to build our website, an accountant to do our taxes, etc.  All of these experts are to a large extent given free reign to charge what they deem appropriate (and what the market will bear), and we must grin and take it. We have no other choice in the matter, except to learn the trade in question, but who has time for that?!

Next time someone asks me “how much?”, I will have much more empathy for their situation.  They are probably scared, gripping their checkbook and bracing for the worst.  Like me at the car-repair shop earlier, they will have to trust the expert (me) to do a great job at a fair price.

After a month or so of softening up the boss on the merits of a company blog, I finally got a bite.  He emailed me to say that he is sold on the merits of a company blog and now wants to know HOW to impliment it.  So, it is now on my shoulders to deliver a blogging strategy that will make sense for a 30-employee-strong marketing agency in the Twin Cities.  I am still in the brainstorming phase of this project and would love some feedback.

Things we need to figure out:

• Who will write?
• How often will people write?
• What will the content be?
• Terms & Expectations

Who will write?
EVERY employee shall be required to post one blog every two weeks.

How often will the blog be updated?
Twice per day.  We need to keep to that schedule.  If 30 people are blogging once every two weeks, that’s 60 blog entries per month.  Shouldn’t be too tough, right?

What will the content be?
Every employee will be required to share expertise on a topic of interest to her.  This could be an exploration of a topic or more of a teach-in-style blog entry.  Any blog entries, so long as it is at least tangentially-related to the business will be accepted.

Terms & Expectations
The blog will share the same expectations as other company-branded communication.  That is, all blog entries shall be respectful of differences as well as support the mission of  the company.  Basically, that means that the blog will receive the same treatment as face-to-face, email, and phone conversations with colleagues and clients.

Summary
Obviously, I have a lot more hashing out to do in terms of this blog strategy.  I am sure that I left out all sorts of important things. Please feel free to offer tips and suggestions via comment below as we move forward with this project.  In turn, I will keep you updated!

Thanks!

I have used an iPhone for a couple of weeks now, using it mostly as an online social media device, and pausing sporadically to make a phone call on it. Generally speaking, it is a good device for connecting with friends on the major online social media networks. Of course there are some pitfalls, too.

The good:
Facebook
MySpace
LinkedIn
Pandora

The bad:
YouTube
Last.fm
Flickr

The ugly:
Twitter
Blogging

First, let’s talk about the Good. The free proprietary applications for Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn are all fantastic. All three provide an easy way to quickly update your status, check and send email, and connect with friends. Facebook even provides a way to chat.

Pandora’s app is simple, intuitive, and offers all the functionality of the Pandora website. One bad thing about this app is that the application closes and the music stops playing when you press the home button. I’m not sure if this is a limitation of the iPhone operating system, itself, or if this is a programming issue. But the iPod app continues playing until I manually close it or press “pause”. It would be nice for Pandora to have that functionality as well.

Now, for the Bad. The biggest disappointment, by far, is the YouTube application that comes pre-installed on the iPhone. It sucks. It is fine for playing videos, but it lacks all of the features that make YouTube a great online social media environment. You can’t view user profiles, post comments, make friends, send email, or really do anything at all, except watch videos.

Flickr does not have an official iPhone app. This is a bit of a black eye for this giant of the online social media world. True, you can still post photos to your Flickr account by taking advantage of Flickr’s “post by email” capabilities, but without the ability to comment on others’ photos and check my Flickr email, and see what my friends are saying about my newly-posted photos, what is the point?

Last.fm’s iphone app doesn’t do anything except stream music, making it a clone of Pandora’s app. Without the ability to check your neighborhood, your recommendations, etc., Last.fm is merely another online radio station.

Finally, we reach the Ugly. The iPhone app store is saturated with Twitter clients of varying abilities. I have only used two free ones – Twitfire and Twitteriffic. As I have said before, Twitfire is great if you just want to send a quick Tweet with a combination of text, location, and photo. But it does not have the capability of viewing other’s tweets. Twitteriffic provides a fantastic interface for viewing tweets en-masse and for sending tweets. Unfortunately, it does not provide a way to track specific friends in the timeline. Also, there is no way to find specific friends via a search. So, these applications are good at what they do, but have significant room for improvement.

Blogging on the iPhone is mainly limited by the keypad. The iPhone is great for short text messages and tweets, but it’s keypad makes it too cumbersome to write anything more than a sentence or two. There are probably kids who can type 60 words per minute on the iPhone, but I am not one of them. In fact, I am lucky if I get 20 words written in a minute. That said, the Wordpress application is a gem! From time-to-time, I post short blogs with photos, which works exceptionally well. Also, the next iteration of the Wordpress app will include a landscape (horizontal) typing feature, which might increase typing efficiency.

So, that is my experience with online social media and the iPhone so far. Please comment if you have anything to add!

(Photo taken with my iPhone)

I broke down and bought the iPhone a week ago for a number of reasons, but the main reason was for its online social media capabilities.  The tools that I use regularly include Twitter, Wordpress, Facebook, and MySpace.  For the last few weeks, I have also been text-messaging (SMS) quite a bit.  Here are the free online social media-related iPhone applications that I use:

• Twitfire
• Twitteriffic (free version)
• Wordpress for iPhone
• Facebook for iPhone
• MySpace for iPhone

Twitfire (a Twitter application): Of all my online social media-related iPhone applications, I use Twitfire the most.  I tried out Twitterific before I tried Twitfire, and based on my experience, Twitfire is much more stable.  Using Twitfire, I am able to quickly send tweets containing my current location, post photos (either from library or taken at time of posting), and do “@” replies.  Utilizing all of these features is quite intuitive, though the usability is a bit clunky. For example, the posting of photos takes a few minutes, and the “@” address book doesn’t have all of my contacts listed.  Twitfire has a built-in web browser that converts links into shortened links and allows me to easily place them into tweets.  One HUGE downside to Twitfire is that you cannot read others’ tweets.  To phrase that last sentence differently, Twitfire is used ONLY for posting tweets and NEVER for reading tweets. (Video review)

Twitteriffic is much more robust than Twitfire, but it hasn’t been very reliable, in my experience.  That is, it doesn’t load up half the time when I open it.  This is frustrating.  That said, when it does work, Twitteriffic is a fantastic product that does everything Twitfire does and MORE!  In addition to being able to post photos, geolocation, and tweets, Twitteriffic has a great interface for viewing and replying to tweets.  To summarize, if you can get Twitteriffic to work consistently, it is a much better product than Twitfire.

Wordpress for iPhone is simply fantastic.  If you use either self-hosted Wordpress or Wordpress.com software for your blog or website, then you will love this application.  The current version allows you to manage and publish posts with photos and hyperlinks.  The next version has promised expanded functionality including horizontal keyboard, posting in the future, managing comments, and managing pages.  Unfortunately, the nature of the keyboard makes it difficult to type as quick as I am used to on my home keyboard, which makes posting long posts such as this one difficult to stomach.

Facebook for iPhone is FANtastic!  From the iPhone home screen, this application’s button has a slick, little icon that tells me how many new messages are in my Facebook in-box in much the same way that my “Mail” button does.  The application has interfaces for my “News Feed”, “Notifications”, “Requests”, “Friends”, “Chat”, and “Inbox”.  I am able to view photos and respond to comments and status updates.  I am also able to write and post photos on friends’ walls.

MySpace for iPhone allows me to manage my status, view and comment on friends’ pages, view and post photos, check and send email, and view friend requests.

Some other tools that I use regularly are the Twitter SMS functionality and Flickr email functionality.  Both of these tools allow me to send photos to Twitter and Flickr, respectively, from the photo management interface on the iPhone.

I just got back from the Verizon store, where I tried out all the features of the brand-spankin’ new Blackberry Storm smartphone.  While it has some features that are noteworthy, on the whole it does not stand up to the features of the iPhone and Google’s G1.  I compared the G1 to the iPhone in my last article, so let’s now see how those two stack up against this new Blackberry!

1. Keypad
   The clickable keypad on the Storm has many advantages over the iPhone, but it is a close second to the G1’s tactile keypad.  The iPhone’s keypad pretty much sucks, particularly when you are trying to send a text message and the keypad doesn’t turn when you turn the phone sideways.
   Advantage: tie between G1 and Storm
2. Touchscreen
   The “clickable” screen on the Storm is pretty darn cool.  Unfortunately, the Storm’s touchscreen isn’t very responsive to finger touches.  I consistently found that I could not select menu items on the first try.  Both the iPhone and G1 feature VERY responsive touchscreens.  So, ideally, the iPhone and G1 would adopt a “clickable” screen.  Nonetheless, they hold a lead over the Storm.
   Advantage: tie between G1 and iPhone
3. Speed
   It seems like the Storm has the slowest response time of the three phones being compared here.  That is, the time between when you click on a button until something happens seems to be longest on the Storm.  This is consistent whether you are trying to switch applications, browse the web, or choose a song from the mp3 player.  Both the iPhone and G1 are pretty quick.
   Advantage: tie between G1 and iPhone
4. Applications (software)
   The Storm comes pre-installed Facebook and Flickr applications as well as basic versions of Microsoft Word, Excel, and Powerpoint.  Unfortunately, you need to pay money to upgrade the Microsoft products if you want to create new documents.  The iPhone comes with email, calendar, Google Maps.  The G1 comes pre-installed with Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Maps (with compass).  There is a wealth of free software available for the G1, a bunch of free and expensive software for the iPhone, and some expensive software for the Storm.  The G1’s open-source Android operating software makes software development easy and open.  Apple’s software store is a bit restrictive, making it less attractive.  That said, Apple’s restrictions and limitations make for a higher-quality product.
   Advantage: G1
5. Quality
   The iPhone and Storm are heads-above the G1 in terms of physical build quality.  The G1 seems to be made out of cheap plastic, whereas both the iPhone and Storm seem to be made of a higher-quality material.
   Advantage: tie between Storm and iPhone
6. Ease of Use
   It’s difficult to find many faults with the iPhone’s intuitive touch-screen operating system.  Both the G1 and Storm offer second-tier imitations.
   Advantage: iPhone
7. SMS and MMS
   Storm outperforms both the G1 and iPhone in terms of sending images via text-message.  Neither of the other phones allow you to do this.  That said, the iPhone’s text-messaging interface is the most intuitive of the three.
   Advantage: Storm
8. Recommendation
   It is clear that each phone has its advantages.  Also, each service has advantages.  For example, T-Mobile’s monthly costs are FAR cheaper than AT&T and Verizons for standard voice/data/text plans.  This is probably the biggest hang-up for me as I think about purchasing one of these phones.  Most of the people I call are Verizon customers.  T-Mobile’s “Pick 5″ would suit me well.  AT&T’s monthly costs would greatly exceed the other two for me if I were to count voice calls.  That said, if most of the people you call are already AT&T customers, then the iPhone would deserve serious consideration.  Ignoring the voice plans, the iPhone offers the best user experience.  It is elegant, easy-to-use, and has a wealth of software (free and expensive) available for download from the  iTunes store.  I am anxiously awaiting the release of the next Google Phone and Storm.  They will surely be WAY better than the first generation versions in terms of build and ease-of-use.  For now, I recommend the iPhone.

I spent 6 hours at the BIG Mall yesterday trying every cell phone and PDA in the place.  I tried the iPhone, G1, and all sorts of other smartphones and PDAs from Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T.  None of them do what I need them to do.  Here’s what I need my cell phone to do:

• Text messaging
• Twitter
• Photo capture
• Ability to email photos
• Video capture
• Ability to upload video to Youtube
• Wordpress image upload
• Wordpress video embed (Youtube)
• Skype
• mp3 player

The main area where ALL the phones fail is in video capturing and uploading.  My 3-year-old Motorola cell phone has video, photo, and audio capture features.  The iPhone and G1 can only capture photos out of the box.  Why these two phones do not have video capture capabilities is beyond me.  The video image is already streaming digitally through the phone when you use the photo capture feature, why not capture 15-30 frames per second of video and encode it to MPEG?  Is it that tough?  How can my crappy 3-year-old cell phone out-perform both of these fancy, new devices?

The iPhone and the G1 operating systems are WAY more intuitive than the others.  Windows, Palm, and Blackberry operating systems were confusing and seemed chintzy, cheap, and slow.  The Windows OS, in particular, was particularly confusing. Both the iPhone and G1 provide simple touch-screen interfaces where you just touch the icon for “web browser” to search the web.  With the other operating systems, you need a working knowledge of all the buttons as well as some training to figure it out.  Even after being showed how to access the web on non-iPhone and G1 phones by the salesman at both the Verizon and T-Mobile stores, I was confused about how to access the web!  Some could blame me for a lack of knowledge or understanding of the respective operating systems, but I call it bad design.

The iPhone is nicer than all of the other phones I tried.  It feels solid and sturdy compared to the G1, which has a cheap plastic feel to it.  It also is the simplest phone, with only one tactile button.

The G1 tops the iPhone with its tactile keypad.  It is quite difficult and time consuming to type a message free of spelling errors on the iPhone, as my big fingers always press the wrong letters on the screen.  I end up having to use the delete key a lot.  The G1’s keypad is awesome.  Writing text messages and blog entries will be significantly easier with the G1.

On price, the G1 wins, hands-down.  At $70 per month, the iPhone rivals data/voice plans provided by Verizon and AT&T.  But T-Mobile’s offers sufficient voice and unlimited 3G data access for only $50 per month!  That’s a $240 savings every year (almost $500 over the course of your 2-year contract).

Here’s where I stand at present.  I have had a voice-only plan for the last 7 years with Verizon.  I have been happy with their voice coverage.  The only reason I am looking to upgrade my phone and plan is that I have become very interested in text messaging, live-blogging, and Twittering in real-time.  I am still debating whether or not it’s worth the $30-60 more per month to get this functionality in a phone. Any guidance or experience that you can provide with either of these two phones would be much appreciated!

Here’s a video showcasing and critiquing the features of the G1:

And here’s a Youtube video showcasing the differences between the iPhone and the new Blackberry:

And here’s a video showcasing the new features of the Wordpress iPhone App (version 1.2):

In  the business world, there is a phrase – “Stick to your core competencies.” – that needs some updating in the Web 2.0 world.  The updated phrase should be something to the effect of, “Transfer your core competencies to the web.”

Last night, I attended the WCCO-sponsored Bloginar at Sweeney’s in St. Paul, MN.  (WCCO is our local CBS affiliate.)  While the event was a resounding success in terms of the quality of engagement and interest by participants, I was struck by one point – WCCO is not utilizing its core competencies to a great extent in the Web 2.0 world.  First, I want to defend WCCO and state for the record that it isn’t totally behind the ball.  In fact, it might even be a leader of their field in terms of Web 2.0.  Its tv news personalities do have blogs (example), and their recent hire of John Daenzer as Director of New Media speaks highly of the company’s committment to getting involved in online social media.  Additionally, the company recently unveiled an innovative online advertising service similar to Google’s Adsense that could benefit local bloggers.  And as a final testament to WCCO’s Web 2.0-immersion, I actually learned of the Bloginar event via Twitter, which says a lot about the success the station is having in communicating in that medium.

What the current actions of WCCO (and probably almost every other news station) describe is a lack of understanding of the flatness of Web 2.0 world.  I don’t mean to say that the folks working at WCCO don’t know this, I am only saying that they are not taking enough action to address it.  Put simply, tv news’ one-to-many, personality-driven model of interfacing with the public will likely not work well in the Web 2.0 world.  The world of online social media is a humble one.  It requires the development of new relationships and regular involvement.  While there will certainly be a good revenue stream for personality-driven, one-to-many television communication for the forseeable future, I venture to guess that if WCCO wants to stay ahead of the Web 2.0 curve, it should move towards more of a citizen-journalism model of interacting with its audience online.  A couple of good local examples of citizen journalism here in the Twin Cities include Twin Cities Daily Planet and The Uptake.

So let’s take a look at some of WCCO’s most obvious core competencies:

• Video collection.  WCCO is a video-gathering machine.  It’s success in the tv news medium relies on it getting high-quality video of breaking news.
• Interviews/contacts.  WCCO has an experienced news team with a robust knowledge of the local community and, presumably, valuable interview contacts.
• Website infrastructure.  WCCO already has a robust website that distributes news.

In order for WCCO to become a more valuable member of the Web 2.0 community, I suggest that it leverage the aforementioned core competencies in the following way:

1. Open source all of your raw video footage and place it online for anyone to download.
2. Open source all of your interview notes (quotes from interviewees as well as video interviews) and allow anyone to download them.
3. Provide a way for citizen-journalists to submit mashed-up news stories to you online (a simple upload form will work for this).
4. Take the cream of the crop of the news stories submitted to you and integrate these citizen-journalists’ news coverage into your broadcasts.
5. Allow visitors to your website the ability to view and rate all of the citizen-journalists’ videos.

If WCCO were to jump on this now, they would be part of an elite group that includes NOVA’s Free Video Archive and the BBC’s Creative Archive as mainstream media providers of broadcast-quality mashupable video.

There is certainly some risk of being a leader in the field of Web 2.0, but the prospective rewards of being among “the first” are also great.  Rewards include $$$, clout in the Web 2.0 world, building of a more innovative culture at WCCO, grabbing more of an audience share, and, perhaps most importantly, better-serving the public.

I intend this post to merely be a starting point for discussion about how tv news media can better serve the public (and their bottom lines) in a Web 2.0 world.  I, myself, am just getting started thinking about this, so I’m sure that there are far more qualified people out there to speak on this topic – I hope those people will share their thoughts below. 

I only started Twittering about a month ago, but already I am starting to see its potential. There is something in the human psyche that prefers short, constant bursts of communication to long ones. Twitter serves this desire and then some by REQUIRING short bursts (maximum of 140 characters – that’s about a sentence-and-a-half). What is interesting about Twitter is that it is mostly meaningless communication. That is, much of what is said on Twitter covers mundane topics like “I found a sweater under my bed!” and “Just had a cup of great jo from Starbucks.” and “Learning ‘Sweet Child O Mine’ on Guitar Hero”. But it is just that type of “meaningless” communication that builds communities. Most of my most valuable friendships were forged at parties, bars, and work while discussing the day-to-day minutia of life. Very few of my friendships were cemented in “meaningful” conversations.

So, I view Twitter as a means of breaking the ice and sharing new ideas with prospective acquaintances and friends. It is a way to enter people’s lives and positively affect each other through short conversations and topics of mutual-interest. It is a way to build new business relationships and strengthen old friendships. People revel in proximity, and Twitter has the potential to bring our digital selves closer to each other.

I have been doing a lot of thinking on the value of online social media.  It is clear that we are still early in the game.  In fact, the game seems to be changing on a monthly basis as new tools are invented and old ones are discarded regularly.

Social Media Tools that I currently use daily include Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress, Youtube, and mySpace.  I also use LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and Digg with less frequency.  I tend to find value in the connections I make with people, which, so far, have not led to any direct or indirect monetary rewards.  I play chess with old and new friends on Facebook, I share music on mySpace, and I gain a lot of knowledge from other people on Twitter.  And I use Youtube to build awareness of my band.

I have been talking with clients and friends a lot about the prospect of utilizing these tools to make money.  “How do we do it?”  “Is it possible?”  That sort of thing.  Put simply – Can online social media be used to sell stuff?

In my experience, the selling of stuff using online social media is really dependent on timing.  For example, I play in a band that wanted to print t-shirts.  It just so happened that a t-shirt manufacturer emailed me on mySpace at the moment that I was looking for t-shirts.  He got my business not because he was necessarily the best, but rather because he happened to be there.  And buying t-shirts isn’t something I am all that interested in.  Put simply, he made it easy for me.  I didn’t have to shop around (or didn’t want to), and he conversed with me one-on-one via email until all the details were settled.

So, when business owners ask me how online social media can be valuable to their bottom line, my experience tells me that building an online social presence is a lot like placing ads on public tv or radio.  You don’t necessarily announce that you have a sale or a discount; rather, you are just there.  And, hopefully, you are there when people are looking to buy whatever it is that you sell. 

ADDED ON 9/29/2008: Further reading [Thanks, @CalGreg!].