So the web was alive with the sound of a million followers for Ashton Kutcher on twitter. A million followers?? It made me think of the impact that may have on twitter

1. There is no doubt that twitter is fast developing mainstream status. That brings with it good and bad news for us mere mortals. Great because the potential reach of our personal brands is wider, bad because you are transitioning from small pond to big pond and it will be harder to gain recognition.
2. What is twitter for? Does the emergence of people with high followers change the game? Has it moved from micro blogging with micro followers to a broadcast to the masses? I think potentially for the big brands both personal and corporate but twitter can be whatever YOU want it to be. Ashton Kutcher needs global popularity to increase his pulling power at the box office, I need loyal followers who are ready to connect with me or my knowledge. Different needs.
3. What does it prove? Does it prove engagement with social media or does it prove that traditional methods of advertising such as billboards and TV requests on Oprah are still the best way to gain mass engagement? Or is it a sign that people will always back the person who stands against the media firm?
4. What are the lessons that we can take from the Kucher effect?

• If you want to develop an online brand, you need to learn how to promote yourself.
• If you want mass connection then combining social with traditional media is still the best policy.
• It is important to decide what you want out of social networking - numbers or engagement?
• It is important to decide are you a broadcaster or a personal connector?
• If all else fails take a picture of a well known person in their underwear and your followers will increase!!

After saying all this I am for celebrities on twitter, I am a supporter of brands using twitter - but would love to know how you feel about it - are you jealous of 1m followers or do you see it as helping you by bringing new people to social media?

I’ve been thinking about the whole traditional media/new media thing - everyone trying to figure out will happen to traditional media in the future. I’ve been mulling over thoughts around this for a while now, but haven’t been able to gather all my thoughts into one cohesive post. And then, I came across Chris’s post entitled All Tomorrow’s Armies and realized that Chris managed to coalesce all my thoughts!

Stay with the old at your own risk. All tomorrow’s armies are equipped and ready to embed. We don’t need to gather. We have our own dial tone. We connect and disband the way waves shape the beach. [source]

Now,  although Chris does go on to say that we might also might not be or do all of those things, but I have a very good feeling that this really will be the way of the media world. If traditional media doesn’t get involved in the social media world, they’re going to get left in the dust.

The New York Times has recently realized that the aggregation of and links to things the paper didn’t produce in-house improves the audience experience and they have begun to provide additional information written by bloggers and in some cases, even their direct competitors. [source] While this isn’t anything new for those of us who are used to the social media world, it’s very cool to see the New York Times embracing our world.

Steve Outing from Editor & Publisher has offered newspaper CEOS and journalists some ‘crisis advice’ in his most recent column. Chief among his advice includes hiring a Social Media VP.

Most newspapers have a vice president of circulation in charge of print distribution. Today, you need a “circulation VP” for the Internet. A more appropriate title: vice president for social media.

A key tenet in the digital media world we now live and do business in is: Be everywhere. Any newspaper company that thinks that its Web site or sites (and maybe a few other services like e-mail newsletters, RSS feeds and mobile-phone alerts) is enough is sadly mistaken. [source]

Today’s newspapers and media outlets have got to adapt. They need to get involved with citizen journalists more, get the reporters blogging, start covering hyper-locally,  and be everywhere on line, absolutely everywhere. Check to make sure that your brand/user name isn’t being brandjacked.

In short, get on it, hire your VP of Social Media (I happen to know a few good candidates) and get started before you go extinct.

While all of my US counterparts are recovering from their Turkey hangover, I’m sitting in rainy Vancouver, BC and thinking about the year to come.  Predictions are starting to pop up all over the web, but one struck me as particularly poignant, and gave me enough pause that I felt compelled to comment.

Max Kalehoff, VP of Marketing at Clickable, and writer of AttentionMax posted a thoughtful and thought-provoking piece to the MediaPost Online Spin Blog (login required).

Max discusses the need for businesses to trim back their strategies in 2009, and focus more on their purpose. I couldn’t agree more. People are ready for change, and not just in your President Elect.

The advertising industry is experiencing budget cuts, partially due to the economy, but I can’t help but think that it has something to do with this age of transparency and honesty.  People are tired of the spin being pushed at them, and anytime a company isn’t completely honest with their consumers, they get called to the mat, loudly and publicly.

2009 is going to signal change in many industries and businesses need to change the way they function if they’re going to survive and succeed.  So, what are the fundamental pieces your business needs to focus on in the upcoming year?

• Pare back your strategies. Business does not have to be complicated. You don’t have to have a complicated strategy in order to reach your customers.

• Increase your purpose. What is the point of your business?  Can you, or better yet, your employees explain accurately what it is you do and why others should join your company or purchase your product or service? Why do you exist?

• Come back to your core values. What were the values you upheld when you began your business? Are you still true to them today or have you let them slide in the face of striving to succeed?

• Increase your social media interaction, or - god forbid - if you’re not involved in social media yet, get there, and get there now. The advertising industry has changed dramatically. The PR industry isn’t the same, and media is in a constant state of flux and change.  Your competition will leave you in a cloud of honesty, transparency, and brilliant, yet subtle, salesmanship.

What are your plans/predictions for business in the coming year? Add your thoughts in the comments and I’ll add them to my list and credit you.

BIGfrontier Communications Group in Chicago just released the results of their recent study about whether or not PR can help a start up get funding faster than if they don’t engage in a PR campaign.  Apparently, companies are 30% more successful in getting funding within 1-3 months than their counterparts who don’t look at PR.

“Those entrepreneurs understand that anything they can do to get them an advantage to get limited or finite funding is something they should avail themselves of, especially now,” said Steve Lundin, founder of BIGfrontier. The boutque firm specializes in PR for startups, tech and consumer companies, and law firms. [source]

The study spoke with 300 start ups, none of which were BIGfrontier clients (which was my first thought, so I was glad to hear that they weren’t talking to their own clients), and only 18% of them even had a PR in place during the funding process.

Overall, this doesn’t surprise me in the least, and certainly was a bit of a no brainer. Companies can only be helped by a positive PR campaign.

I’m in complete agreement with the study, not that this should surprise anyone, but I’m a firm believer that PR and social media strategies are two of the best ways to get your company noticed, to raise it’s profile in certain communities and among specific stakeholders. Why would you even consider not engaging in a PR campaign?

If you’ve been paying any attention to the interwebs at all over the weekend, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about when I mention the Motrin debacle. Before I get into my own personal opinion about this whole mess, let’s quickly recap the situation to date.

First, Motrin put out the following ad:

And then, the world blew up. Seriously pissed off moms alllllll over Twitter and on blogs, everywhere, railed against the commercial, against the company and against the product. They all took offense at the idea that Motrin was trying to use something they all loved (baby wearing) to sell a pain reliever.

Ok. Wait. Stop. Everyone needs to calm the hell down first.

I’m not even going to get into the whole baby wearing thing, because I’m not a mom, have no intention of becoming a mom and therefore have no opinion. Do what you want, for whatever reason you want. As long as it works for you, great. Frankly, I don’t give a shit.

My problem is a more basic one that the one the moms got all up in arms about, and that is: People picked on the fact that Motrin talked about the practice of baby wearing, not about the fact that there was a misstep in their social media strategy (does Motrin even have a social media strategy?) and the fact that they didn’t pay attention to the conversation on the internet.

That’s the big problem. Who cares what they choose to be the kind of pain that people face? Maybe some people do experience discomfort in using a baby sling - we don’t know for sure, because we are not every person in the world.  No, Motrin’s big problem was that they came out of the gate with an ad, before listening to the chatter on the internet.

In Motrin’s defense, they did act fast when they saw the kerfuffle and put up the following message:

For a huge pharmaceutical giant, that kind of speed (this was up first thing Monday morning) is unprecedented. Seriously impressive Motrin.

This is just one example of the wildfire way that opinion and news can spread about your company without you even knowing it. If you don’t already have a social media strategy in place, you better get one, and quickly.

The truth of the matter is, even though moms on social networking sites are vocal, any community can be vocal online. One of the blogs I read about this said “this is one group you don’t want to piss off” but really, do you want to piss off any of your consumers online? Are you ok with not pissing off the moms, but maybe alienating all of the single women online? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

(image source: Motrin grabbed as a screen shot)

Om Malik, one of the few uber-A-listers I haven’t met or hung out with yet, has a fantastic post about the economy, VC Funding and start ups. With the economy heading so completely south, start ups are starting to tighten their belts.

Heck, look at Jeremiah Owyang’s tally of the Social Media layoffs recently:

Oct 10: Fast Company, which has social network for website and popular videoblogger, lays off 20

Oct 10: Seesmic, a video conversation player lays off 7

Oct 6: eBay to lay off 10% of workforce to streamline after recession.

Oct 3: Gawker blog network lays off 19, and brags about it.

Om goes on to say that because of this meeting, Sequoia is telling its companies to put survival strategies in place and figure out ways to outlast the broader market troubles. (image source: GigaOm)

Sequoia isn’t the only one advising its startups to tighten their belts and prepare for a roller coaster ride. Ron Conway, a well-known angel investor in the Valley who has invested in companies like Google, offered very sobering advice to his companies via email earlier today. (from Om)

Raising capital will be much more difficult now. You should lower your “burn rate” to raise at least 3-6 months or more of funding via cost reductions, even if it means staff reductions and reduced marketing and G&A expenses. This is the equivalent to “raising an internal round” through cost reductions to buy you more time until you need to raise money again; hopefully when fund raising is more feasible.

Letting go of staff is hard and frequently sickening.  A re-evaluation of timelines and re-focus on milestones with an eye to doing more with less will allow you to live many more days, and the name of the game in this environment in some respects is survival — survival until conditions change. If you are in a funding cycle, you should raise your funding as soon as possible and raise as much as possible but face the fact that if you can’t raise money now you must cut costs. [source]

Hanging out at the Network Hub listening to David Jones, one of the VPs at Hill & Knowlton tonight. And yes, we know it’s Monday. David is in town throwing Beer 2.0 tomorrow night so we threw Third Tuesday on Third Monday.

One of the things that cracked me up right away was “give PR people access to social media and they will f*ck it up.” I’ve been on both sides, and I can attest to the fact that this can be very true.

I have to say, David is a very engaging speaker – funny and honest. Just my kinda guy! We bantered about how we both think the social media press release is kinda useless – he’s meh about it than I am, but we both agree that it’s simply not necessary. (image source Rebecca Bollwitt)

There was a great discussion about what Hill & Knowlton does for their clients using the MAIL acronym: Monitor the space; Analyze your findings; Interact with the communities; Lead and start creating your own content.

It wasn’t until David started talking about the blog dashboard that he created and put on his on blog that I finally connected the dots and realized that he’s DoctorJones on Twitter. You know, someone I actually talk to, regularly. Yep. Quick on the uptake. That’s me!!

First there was Janet and the Exxon Mobile twitter debacle, and now, Tim Walker uncovered the fact that the American Airlines twitter account was a fake as well. AA is aware of the situation and is taking care of it.

So, is Twitter, which is primarily a tool for individuals, right for brands? Some brands are doing it right, for sure. Zappos definitely is. Jetblue is out there and so is the New York Times. But I wonder if before brands jump into the Twitter arena with both feet whether it’s really the best place for them. Are they spending time as people, just being in the community?

Twitter is the simultaneously most difficult to explain and coolest social communications platform ever, but brands need to tread carefully when signing up. Think about what your goals are where your Twitter account is concerned and make sure you really join the community rather than just use it as a bullhorn.

I love Will It Blend. I think it’s one of the most creative viral videos ever. Josh Bernoff recently asked Jeremiah Owyang for some of his random swag from companies for a demonstration. Based on Jeremiah’s comment that he didn’t know his Flip would be turned to dust, I suspect that Josh didn’t mention that he could be using this swag as a demonstration of one of the key points in Groundswell.

Do what Josh and Charlene say. Pick a clear objective first not just choosing technologies because they seem cool, otherwise your next social media program is going to end up as social media dust too.

The following is a guest post from David Mullings of Realvibez Media and Co-Founder of StartupToons.

Social networking is all the rage right now, and yet many business people are not totally sold on the idea or can’t figure out how they can leverage these networks for their businesses.

It’s vital to think of these networks as additional tools in your box of tactics rather than anything big and scary. I set out to build my personal thought leadership brand via Facebook because I believe that personal brands can fuel corporate brands. Since the age of 15 I have been working to become a positive role model for young people around the world and I saw an opportunity to continue this.

I joined Facebook in June 2007 and to date I have managed to accomplish the following:

• Asked to endorse a book on entrepreneurship by a frequent contributor to CNBC’s The Big Idea
• Been introduced to a venture capital firm
• Received an introduction to an angel investor who is now an advisor
• Interviewed for a book by an Inc. Magazine Contributing Editor about Gen-Y entrepreneurs
• Interviewed about effectively using Facebook to network for business
• Paid speaking engagement at Boston College to present to the Entrepreneur Society and major article in school paper
• Landing a mention for a new venture on Inc. magazine’s staff blog on the day of launch
• Asked for quotes for a major magazine article on social media and the Caribbean
• A feature on CollegeMogul.com, a popular blog focused on gen-y ventures
• Built a fan page for the country of Jamaica that has hit 1600 fans in less than 3 months with no money spent

So, how, within just under a year, did I accomplish this?

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