Webinar this Friday: Blending Social Media with Traditional Marketing

We’ve talked about it for a while, but here’s the first official Webinar with yours truly at the helm, along with my colleague Ari Newman of Filtrbox.

When everyone’s a twitter about social media, how do companies adjust to the changing role of marketing in an era of social media vs. traditional marketing,  interactive vs. traditional media,  and real time consumer feedback?  Does your company need to have a presence on Facebook? Should you be hiring someone to Twitter instead of using direct mail – or should you use both?  Although some companies have embraced social media marketing very successfully many are still wondering where to even start, and how to integrate into existing programs.

Join us  on September 18th at 1 PM ET/ 10 AM PT for a complimentary webinar— as they discuss how social media marketing and traditional marketing integrate, how your company can leverage social media, along with best practices, how to listen, monitor, engage and interact, with highlights of specific case studies.
During our 60 minute seminar you will learn how to build a basic framework for social media activities within your organization, as well as:

·         The evolution of marketing
·         Traditional marketing vs. Social media marketing
·         Looking ahead – blending social and traditional marketing
·         How do we get there?
·         Listening, monitoring, engaging
·         Everyone doesn’t need a Facebook page
·         Opt in via Twitter: is Twitter the new Direct Mail?
·         Micro Blogs
·         Best practices
·         The case studies
·         Q&A

Please register here.

Client News: Pogoplug partners with Seagate to power the FreeAgent DockStar

Since their launch on the noisy showfloor of CES this year, Cloud Engines is known for being a different kind of company.  Despite being one of the few hardware start-ups out there, Pogoplug has always looked for ways to shake things up in the way they do business.  True to form, today the firm announced a partnership with Seagate that uses Pogoplug’s award-winning service to power their new network adapter, the FreeAgent DockStar.  This product brings Seagate DockStar owners the cloud-like functionality and simple sharing that has gained Pogoplug widespread acclaim from industry press and analysts alike.  With plans to continue marketing itself as both a device and a service, we want to say Congratulations to Cloud Engines for breaking the mold once again.

Pogoplug also introduced several impressive new social features today that make sharing on social networks easier and more fun.  Pogoplug now publishes shares to Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, letting friends and followers see shared folders without long download times or size limitations.  With RSS and email sharing as existing option for sharing, these additional sharing options give users a customizable experience for sharing their memories with friends and family. Below are some of the blog posts and coverage from these announcements:

• CNET
• Engadget
• Gizmodo
• VentureBeat
• SlashGear
• jkOnTheRun
• Electronista
• GottaBeMobile

Client News: VUDU on a roll – now on an LG Blu-ray player

Well, VUDU has done it again.  I know we’re biased (being that they’re our client and all) but we’re very excited about what they’re doing.   Last week we had a couple of announcements for VUDU (all with accompanying press releases) regarding the launch of VUDU on broadband HDTVs from both LG and Mitsubishi.  Today they’re announcing the launch of VUDU on the LG Network Blu-ray player, the BD390.  This player is pretty awesome, and has an amazingly positive review over at CNET.  VUDU clearly saddled up with a winning a horse.

This is a big deal for VUDU because it’s a clear demonstration of their intent to spread VUDU all over the living room.  VUDU provides brand new Hollywood titles in 1080p picture quality, and with 5.1 Dolby Digital Plus surround sound, with no monthly subscription required.  This quality of service should be available on as many devices as possible, to provide everybody access to the best HD movie streaming service in the world.  If there’s a device in the living that connects to the Internet and is capable of streaming HD movies, it should have VUDU on it.

In terms of timing for press announcements, 3PM EST on a Wednesday after a 3 day weekend is not generally ideal.  Add to that the fact that media darling Apple Inc. has a huge event today, and this looks like a definitely sub-optimal time for an awesome announcement.  However, CEDIA also starts today (or at least media briefings do) and so we are making the best of some challenging timing.  The media response has been pretty darn good, all things considered, and coverage looks pretty decent.  Below are some of the posts coming out re. VUDU on the BD390.

• Engadget
• TWICE
• Gizmodo
• CNET
• Boy Genius Report
• Hot Hardware
• Big Picture Big Sound
• eHome Upgrade

Client News: VUDU is moving and shaking, now working with LG and Mitsubishi

VUDU has had a busy week.  On Tuesday their partnership with LG (announced last month in New York) became a full-fledged reality as LG broadband HDTV owners got a software update on their televisions.  This update loaded the VUDU streaming movie service onto their sets (inside the Netcast Entertainment Center).  Now the owners of LG HDTV plasmas and LCDs can rent or buy HD movies in full 1080p with Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 surround sound in a direct stream through their television.  No box, no wires, no disc – just a television, a remote control, and a comfy couch. Well done VUDU and well done LG.

To add even more glory to a terrific week, VUDU also announced a new deal with Mitsubishi.  Diamond Unisen televisions (the cool ones with an integrated sound bar) will ship with VUDU integrated in the television.   This marks deals with 2 different consumer electronics manufacturers in as many months – 2 of the largest CE companies in the world too.  Again, VUDU… well done.

Today’s announcement with Mitsubishi has enjoyed some traction in the press.  The release went out via PR Newswire, and you can read some of the coverage below.

• Engadget
• CNET
• Hot Hardware
• Gizmodo
• PC World
• Engadget HD
• TWICE
• Contentinople
• NewTeeVee
• Electronista
• Electronic House
• Zatz Not Funny
• Home Media Magazine

A Floating Embargo for a Moving Target

By now we have all heard the horror stories of developers waiting for the iPhone App store to give approval for their apps.  Apple’s basic philosophy in approving apps seems to be “we’ll get to it when we get to it.” The same applies to app updates, leaving many a developer and their users stranded like a cat on a raft for weeks.

So, then, how do you promote an iPhone app release when you can’t know when an app will go live in the store? There are a few strategies:

1.) Make a firm embargo. You will get an email from Apple when your app is ready, and you have the option to take it down, out of the app store.  As soon as your app is approved, yank it down, and then start your outreach with a firm embargo specified for the press.  This makes for a level playing field, since everyone knows when the story is a go.  However, Apple still doesn’t give you a specific time when your app will reappear.  This means that even though you specify “Tuesday at 9AM PST” for the embargo, the app might not reappear precisely at 9AM Tuesday.  This will result in fewer people being able to download the app spontaneously, right after reading about the cool new thing.

And there’s a worse possibility too. The app could appear at 7AM instead of 9AM. This means that any press watching the app store have no reason to hold the embargo any longer, since it’s now in the public domain.  And once someone breaks embargo, it’s anyone’s guess who will still cover. Strategies on how best to communicate and manage a broken embargo are best left for another post.

Option #1 will probably secure more press coverage, but you risk most of the readers not having the opportunity to download the app. You get buzz, but a lower buzz to download ratio.

2.) Give a “floating” embargo. Pitch your story while awaiting approval, but ask the bloggers not to go live with a story until they get the signal from you that the app is up. This strategy avoids missing downloads from eager readers, but selling the concept might be difficult. Even if you get an agreement, there is the risk of a blogger breaking the embargo causing other blogs to forego the story. Also, some writers require editor approval; editors who may frown on a floating embargo. Not to mention a blogger could forget about your story in the swell of other stories between your pitch and the app going live. They are busy people, after all.

The floating embargo is tricky, especially if you’re pitching writers with whom you don’t have a trust relationship.  So far, we have gotten a positive response from a few bloggers to a floating embargo, but these are writers we know well and who rely on us to dish them good news and maintain fair embargoes (in so far as we can control them).

If buzz is your biggest goal, a firm embargo is your best shot, as you are likely to get more publications on board. If you are going for more downloads, you need to make sure your app is ready to go, in which case a floating embargo might be worth the chance. Your strategy will be determined by the type of app you are promoting, how much buzz you’ve already gotten and who your contacts are.

Why you should vote for the S2 Panel at SxSW

Where most panels at SxSW will have one or two experts, we think a broad cross-section of experience is more valuable (and more fun), so we’re bringing six CEOs.  There’s no shortage of talent in the S2 client pool, so we’ve selected five S2 entrepreneurs to discuss proven strategies for rising above industry noise while our own Jeremy Toeman moderates the discussion.

2. Diversity of Content:
With seasoned experts in all walks of consumer tech, from the web to devices, this panel represents the best conglomerate of technology experts out there.  We’ve got boxee and Redux to talk about the best platforms for engaging with digital entertainment real-time.  Want to see how a device can add real-time, social functionality to your storage?  Pogoplug can answer that question.  We’ll also look at real-time content creation with 12seconds and how to manage the surge of social content on Facebook with Face.com.

- Daniel Putterman is the CEO of Pogoplug, the award-winning device that lets users access and share files from their home external hard drive.  The Pogoplug has been praised as the simplest way to free your inner drive, bringing cloud-like functionality to storage people already own.

-David Macintosh is the CEO and co-founder of Redux, your entertainment guide to the web.  Redux is a new social media service that helps people find online entertainment recommended by people who are into the same stuff that they are – all in real-time.

- Sol Lipman is the co-founder of 12seconds.tv and avid chicken enthusiast.  He’s built the best way to share short videos from the web or mobile devices.

- Gil Hirsch is the CEO of Face.com, the best in class facial recognition software that is not only highly accurate, but also works efficiently at web-scale. Since launching their Facebook app in March, Face.com has successfully recognized and auto-tagged over 1.5 billion photos

To vote for us in the SxSW Panel Picker, click this link and give us a thumbs up.  To catch these companies and more Stage Two entrepreneurs at other events, follow S2 on Twitter for real-time updates as the year progresses.  Otherwise, we’ll see you in Austin.

10 Ways to Ruin Your Online Authenticity

In regards to PR firms behaving badly, I have a guest post up on Brian Solis’ PR 2.0 blog called “Why Authenticity Matters“. While the idealist in me thinks “duh, everyone should understand it” the mere fact that it needed to get written seemingly justifies this follow-up post with some easy-to-follow, practical advice. On what not to do.  Unfortunately, my hunch is most of the people who really need this advice most certainly are not going to find our little blog, but one can always hope.

1. Undisclosed Shills.
   You should never have “influencers” promoting your product without clear disclosure.  Whether paid or unpaid, every time you want to engage someone in preaching your love, that relationship should be made clear.  When shills are discovered, there is immediate and one would argue permanent taint left on a brand.
2. Spam.
   What list would be complete without spam?  Got a newsletter that people can opt-in to? Great!  Buying a list of names and email addresses and sending them unwarranted babble? Bad!
3. Fake People.
   In lieu of paying others to do your work, some firms create fake personas to write glowing reviews on their behalf.  Sites like Yelp, MySpace, Amazon, and more are typically the target of phony non-existent reviewers.  It’s a little trickier to find the fakes, but if you are on the hunt, you’ll find the trails soon enough.
4. Anonymous Commenting.
   Commenting on blogs and discussion forums is a tricky territory to begin with.  Anonymous commenting is just terrible.  Also, since you leave an IP address and other “fingerprints” when you do it, odds are sooner or later someone figures you out.
5. Misrepresenting Products.
   This is a bit more of a “high-brow” approach to deception.  Since most readers of most content do not do their own fact-checking, it’s fairly easy to plant false information about a competitor’s products. This can go under the radar for a little while, but sooner or later you’ll drop the wrong message on the wrong place, and it’ll make it’s way to the hands of those who can correct it. And they will, and then it’s retribution time.
6. Pay-For-Things.
   In the current state of things, it’s extremely challenging to mandate or track who is being paid to write, and about what products.  Until it’s straightened out and disclosure goes hand-in-hand with paid blogging, commenting, or tweeting, I’d stay the heck away.
7. Pumped Up Reviews.
   When I see a product with a small number of reviews (on a site like Amazon), all are 5 star, and all are posted around the same few days, I call shenanigans.  When I see lots of 5 star reviews with thin/shallow content, I know something’s up.  And I’m not the only one.  Don’t do it, don’t have friends do it, don’t have contractors do it.  The entire purpose of user reviews is to provide value, not to trick people into buying things.  Breaking that trust does much more than do your would-be-returners a disservice, it lessens the overall value of peer reviews on sites like Amazon.
8. Retractions.
   The Internet has a long memory. It’s pretty close to permanent.  Putting something up somewhere, then trying to hide it later can work, but can also lead to disaster.  Taking screenshots and uploading them elsewhere is far too easy.  You’re better off being more prudent rather than making mistakes and trying to cover them up.  And we all know how much fun dealing with busted coverups can be.
9. One-Directional Messaging.
   Got a blog, don’t allow comments? Send tweets but never reply? These are the simplest examples of perverting natural two-directional messaging platforms into one way roads to nowhere.  You can resist as long as you want, but your customers are looking for direct engagement, and brands that satisfy these needs are seeing results.  Note: this doesn’t mean your CEO needs to personally respond to every incoming email on their own!
10. Publishing Rumors.
    This spans beyond just mistakes companies make, but individuals, bloggers, and others as well. The more anyone gets known for creating/perpetuating rumors, the less credible they become over time.  Further, if you never admit mistakes or clear up the messes you make, that too will stick around for the long run.

As the old saying goes, it takes years to build trust, but only seconds to destroy it.  In the modern era of hyper-connected, self-publishing, on-the-record, capture-the-moment lifestyle, it’s become virtually impossible to “get away with it” and bankable odds say you’ll get caught.

What does this all really mean?  It means it’s time to invest in building better products.  Excellent products don’t need shills to post fake reviews, as your customers will do it for you.  Great services will get referred by the users, not by your paid placements.  You’ll never need to stoop to spam or using your PR team to write press releases about the new junior level person you just hired just to “keep the momentum going”, as users will pass the messages along for you.  There’s no better investment you can make than into the product itself, it’ll outweigh false love anytime.

Client News: Boxee momentum drives series B funding

Coming out of CES this year, Boxee gained a lot of momentum. During the first half of the year we targeted mainstream business press to raise Boxee’s profile for content partners. Articles in the New York Times, The Washington Post, All Things D, and more drove interest from hardware makers, content partners, and even more press. That coverage subsequently also generated attention from the investment community even though Boxee had just raised their Series A in November of last year…

From that interest, we’re happy to announce Boxee has raised their next round of funding. Here’s the news from their blog:

We are happy to announce that Boxee closed a $6M round of financing led by Boston-based General Catalyst with participation by prior investors Spark Capital and Union Square Ventures. Neil Sequeira from General Catalyst will join our board.

We closed our Series A late last year, but given the momentum and opportunities we’ve seen over the past few months, we thought it made sense to bring in a new partner and additional funds.

General Catalyst brings more than just money to the table. We wanted a partner to help us as we strengthen our relationships with big media and cable companies. As we learned (the hard way), it is a complicated world.. Neil and General Catalyst as a firm have years of experience, deep understanding, and extensive network in these industries, and we are looking forward to working together with them.

Going forward we plan to focus on:

* Improving the product – We are working on the Beta release (due later this fall), but also looking beyond Beta and into the roadmap of 2010. The idea is to have a healthy mix of development driven by user feedback (which is the essence of the upcoming Beta) and innovation that comes from within Boxee.
* Adding more content – We believe Boxee can be a great partner for independent content producers as well as big media companies. We will try to bring more TV Shows, Web Shows and Movies from ad-based, subscription-based and a la carte type services.
* Attracting more developers – While we have an App Store on Boxee, we know it needs some love. For Developers, we know it needs to be easier to develop and monetize apps. For users, we’re going to make it easier to find apps on Boxee. Last but not least we’re going to extend the APIs so everyone can do more with Boxee.
* Bringing Boxee into devices – Boxee today is mostly serving a tech-savvy audience – those who feel comfortable connecting a computer to a TV. To make Boxee more accessible for a mainstream consumer it’s important for us to get Boxee embedded into connected TVs and Blu-Ray players, game consoles and set-top boxes. We’re already talking to device makers to ensure Boxee works on a variety of platforms for 2010.

We are really excited about the future and glad to have General Catalyst and Neil as part of the team.

Here’s the coverage so far:
NYTimes: Bits
TechCrunch/Washington Post
CNet
New York Observer
The Deal
Read Write Web
Digital Media Wire
Light Reading
Broadband TV News
Inquisitr

Client News: Team Apart brings remote workgroups together at last

A new startup we’re working with opened its doors in a closed beta today.  Team Apart is launching a new service to aid remote workgroups with a pretty powerful set of features including:

• Group Video-chat
• Collaboration tools like whiteboards and shared notepads
• Persistent workspace (so shared data can remain available indefinitely)
• Real-time document and photo sharing
• Browser-based (no download, no plugins)
• FREE

Team Apart chose to launch in a closed beta to bring in a few hundred beta testers who could help them identify bugs, innovate new features, and make sure the service is robust enough for prime-time business users.  Their intended audience is small businesses, distributed work groups, and client-based companies (like ad agencies and PR companies).  Anyone who needs to work and meet with people who are in a different location can benefit from this product.

Team Apart is announcing their new service via their company blog, and the full text of that announcement can be found here.  Some folks in the technology press have covered the news and are giving out invites to join the beta.  We will update the list as coverage comes in.

News:

• Techcrunch
• WebWorkerDaily
• VentureBeat
• Mashable
• ReadWriteWeb

Sustainability in Marketing

Out of respect for our surroundings, we’re slowly reaching commendable levels of sustainability. Some people are beginning to compulsively track their plastic consumption, and even I’ve caught myself re-using Ziploc bags for days in a row. At Stage Two, we’ve been gauging how the essence of environmental sustainability ties into the marketing world.

In our economically-driven society, it’s beyond easy to prioritize our actions by what makes us the most money. A marketing firm could easily sign on as many clients as possible in the short term, and conduct relatively objective business with each of them, but then where’s the authenticity? If sustainability is defined by using only what is necessary, then in marketing, it’s reflected in the quality of the team.  A firm simply doesn’t need a whole Ford assembly line of representatives with little skill (aside from that of speed-working) just for the sake of having as many cogs as possible to sign on as many clients as possible. Instead, sustainable marketing calls for a small, handpicked team of consultants who bring to the table a unique skill set coupled with passion. In a sense, bigger isn’t better and more isn’t merrier.

Most importantly, though, good consultants will savor the experience of working with a company they genuinely want to see succeed. On this note, there exists such a thing as the “right kind” of client. Firms shouldn’t be afraid to turn down working with a company if they don’t mesh well together (or if the product is inoperable… you can’t pitch a product if you don’t believe it!). The whole purpose of this profession is to work to benefit the client, not simply to book as much revenue as possible (which is why Stage Two isn’t a suit-and-tie, watch-your-language, conference-room-in-ten-minutes kind of place). I mean, let’s face it, we as marketing pros have a job to do, and that job isn’t to parade around flaunting our professional relationships with him and her; our job is to respect our relationships. This fine line is especially apparent in media relations, just one aspect of what a firm like Stage Two handles.

Let’s examine the intricacies of public and media relations a bit. The fatal mistake that most people in PR make is that they don’t spend the time to get to know who they’re pitching to. Once you understand that a writer’s job is to deliver a specific story to his or her readers – whether it’s strictly gadget news for Engadget or consumer-web for Mashable – then journalists will be far more willing to respond to a relevant pitch. It’s thoroughly unsustainable to waste the potential of a strong relationship on an irrelevant plea to the wrong pub. Cringe-inducing mass pitches might be easy to write and send to a purchased press list, but they’ll only burn your bridges. You’ll never get a second shot with the pubs you’ve inadvertently harassed. Instead, think of press and product as symbiotic: without one, the other is doomed. As a result, knowing and respecting the press enables you to create a sustainable loop with them. They’ll grow to trust that whenever you approach them, it’ll be for something worth their time.

If you haven’t noticed by now, this whole sustainability kick has trended so long because it goes far beyond recycling coffee cups. It’s the basic philosophy of cutting down on waste. So ask yourself, are you wasting the chance to build a sustainable relationship by burning your bridges with tactless pitches? Or are you going the extra mile to cultivate valuable relationships?