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Activity streams and data visualizations let us consume vast amounts of data in short periods of time.

Together, they may just be the magic bullet for business to realize the true value of the social web.

The problem, there are no interoperable standards for activity streaming and most companies hoard their data, says Google Open Web Advocate Chris Messina (@chrismessina) in this exclusive interview about how activity streams and infographics will revolutionize the way organizations conduct business, and how employees and project teams prioritize and manage work flows.

Today, we think of a Facebook news feed as an activity stream. But we've only just scratched the surface of how activity streams integrated into work flow processes will fundamentally change the way we collaborate.

Using Google Buzz, the open source community and Facebook's product development process as examples, Chris makes it easy to understand how and why activity streams are central to online collaboration, how they sharpen an organization's competitive edge and how they will ultimately result in better products and services.

Given the sheer volume of data that's out there now, information parsed in smaller, bite-size chunks is more valuable than gigs and gigs, because it's easier to digest in a shorter period of time.

Like status updates, activity streams make data easier to appreciate. Â We have learned to attenuate ourselves to dropping in and pulling out of streams to prolonged state of "ambient intimacy."

Google Buzz is the search giant's first attempt at an activity streaming service, which is being used by project teams to collaborate on business projects. Social graphs are a byproduct of activity streams.

The are the collection of messages, relationships and interactions that occur in activity streams, and if you create infographics to better understand that data, the you can glean meaningful business intelligence from all the data. But currently, most organizations are not making their data available.

They're hoarding their it, depriving employees and customers from using it to better understand how they can improve their business processes.

This is a missed opportunity because data affords company's retrospective insight, intelligence about the nature of the way its employee's collaborate, and the ability to maintain a faster, more responsive, healthier organization. If organizations do get over the hoarding hurdle, they're still going to need to find a way to make their data useful, and that's where data visualization comes in.

Pictures are worth a thousand words, and realizing actionable business intelligence from raw data is significantly enhanced through infographics that make it easy to understand the meaning of the data.

Yet even Facebook, with all the data it has about its users, gives users very little in the way of insights to help us better manage our attention online. Â They hoard data as well.

Facebook could provide so much valuable intelligence about what motivates us online, but currently, they even struggle to present us with ads that are relevant to our interests. In all fairness, the same is true of Google.

In fact, as popular as Google Analytics is, it really tells us very little about human behavior because it doesn't allow us to correlate social signifiers against how people spending time on our websites.

Numerical statistics don't give us any social intelligence about what people think about our sites.

Search engines are still the dominant channel through which we find information online.

How social media has caused the scope of marketing to expand inside organizations, why customer service needs to pay attention to customer influence, the concept of relinquishing oversight as a way of regaining control, aligning social media policy with business strategy and integrating social media into destination websites featuring Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang), who blogs at Web Strategy, is a partner at the Altimeter Group and is set to deliver the opening keynote at the third annual Digital Impact Conference May 6-7, 2010 in NYC.

SHOW NOTES

01:03 -- A discussion of the different speakers lined up to present at the Digital impact conference in New York City May 6-7, 2010, now in its third year.

* Shashi Bellamkonda, social media swami — aka director of social media, Network Solutions

* Stacie Bright, senior communications marketing manager, Unilever

* LaSandra Brill, manager, Service Provider Web and Social Media Marketing group, Cisco Systems

* Scott DeYager, social media supervisor, Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc.

* Jason Forget, communications manager, GE Energy

* Doug Frisbie, national social media and marketing integration manager, Toyota Motor Sales, USA, Inc.

* Andrew Lark, vice president, Dell

* Jennifer Preston, social media editor, New York Times

* Jeremy Rawitch, manager, corporate communications, Southern California Edison

* Kevin Roderick, director of the UCLA Newsroom, University of California, Los Angeles

* Colonel Bryan Salas, director of public affairs, U.S. Marine Corps Public Affairs

* Katie Dowd, director of new media, Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs

* Gabriel Stricker, director, Global Communications & Public Affairs, Google, Inc.

REGISTER

06:27 -- An overview of the broader trends in social media based on Jeremiah Owyang's research at the Altimeter Group.

07:41 -- Heather Armstrong's experience trying to fix a broken Maytag washing machine, and how she finally managed to get results by warning her twitter followers "so that you may never have to suffer like we have: do not ever buy a Maytag. I repeat: our Maytag experience has been a nightmare." Interestingly enough, Forbes.com story about the incident quoting Pete Blackshaw, the previous guest on this podcast, "The problem with call centers and consumer relations departments is that they tend to look at consumers in a vacuum, independent of influence," which suggests that organizations need to look beyond individual customer interactions to try evaluate the customer's social media influence, which is one of things that social CRM attempts to accomplish. The take away, according to Jeremiah, is that what happens in support can quickly become a marketing or public relations incident.

08:27 -- "Customers don't care which department you are in. They just want their problem fixed. The scope of marketing has grown significantly... Companies are siloed and it's very difficult [for them] to think holistically about their overall customer experience," says Jeremiah who will address this theme in his keynote at the 2010 Digital Impact Conference.

09:25 -- A discussion of analysts Charlene Li's upcoming book "Open Leadership," which explores the theme of how leaders can let go of control in order to gain more power back, because the power has shifted to those who are using social computing platforms and organizations need to acknowledge this.

10:24 -- Glassdoor.com, a new website where employees can rate their employers and Unvarnished, which allow you to rate your colleagues and the quality of their work, both reinforce the notion that there are no more secrets.

11:00 -- According to Jeremiah, social media policy is a key component of effective online organizational communications, and he says there are actually three different policies that organizations need to consider developing. The first is a corporate policy, which would address how to deal with the social Web, and in particular, during a crisis. The second is an employee disclosure policy, which would tell employees what they can say and what they can say in public spaces online. And the third one, which he says most companies don't have in place and which might have kept Nestle out of trouble, is a community policy, which would dictate how community members should behave and describe to dos and don'ts.

11:56 -- An example of a community policy Jeremiah's seen that he thinks is well done is Dogster's Community Guidelines. He also says early adopters like Intel, Microsoft and Sun have had community policies in place for some time now.

12:51 -- Best Buy's is good example of an organization that has an effective social media policy designed to work for employees who may not have advanced degrees.

13:20 -- Inside the enterprise, legal is a common pocket of resistance. Smart strategists should engage them early on. And their are often turf wars between corporate marketing and the social media team because they usually have different ideas about how to achieve their objectives. Also, product managers are typically inclined to approach situations differently from strategists, because they want to build online communities around products, and the strategists want to build community around a lifestyle or a brand.

14:01 -- When it comes to policing social media policies, Jeremiah suggests turning that over to the employees themselves and crowd sourcing those capabilities. Use an internal online community to allow people to call out when people are doing things wrong and doing things right.

15:27 -- There's nothing wrong with a measured, step-by-step approach to social media policy development.

16:10 -- Not all organizations should be rushing into social media. In Jeremiah's opinion, to mitigate risk organizations should approach social media when they have the right research and plans in place. Companies need to think through what it means to be social, and Jeremiah encourages a pragmatic approach.

17:01 -- Using mainstream media advertising to send people to their Facebook page without considering where the transaction occurs. "If you're making money through ecommerce on your corporate site, why would you be so quick to send traffic, whether it be from a chicklet or a Facebook advertisement, away from your site? Most companies say because I want to have trust or word of mouth, but they haven't thought it through carefully about the ramifications and what that actually means," says Jeremiah.

18:06 -- Customers visiting your corporate website may be further down the sales funnel, so you may not want to be so quick to send them away. The future of social engagement, as Jeremiah sees it, is integrating the social experience into your own destination website, and he's going to show a framework for achieving that at the Digital Impact Conference May 6-7, 2010 in NYC.

19:14 -- In terms of who Jeremiah Owyang looks to as thought leaders in the social media space, he mentions Steve Rubel, Charlene Li, David Armano, Jen McClure, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Ben Parr and Louis Gray because he sees them putting out new thoughts instead of just rehashing what's out there already.

21:30 -- End

RECOMMENDED EPISODES

* Twitter CEO Evan Williams Unveils @Anywhere at SXSW

* Corporate Social Media Policy Development

* Mashable CEO Pete Cashmore at SXSW

* Mosaic of Trust with Richard Edelman

ABOUT THE PODCASTERS

@EricSchwartzman provides online communication training, strategy and governance to public relations, public affairs, corporate communications and marketing specialists. He has extensive experience integrating emerging information technologies into organizational communications programs through public speaking, hands-on training seminars, consulting and the development of corporate policies on social media usage.

His clients have included Boeing, BYU, City National Bank, Environmental Defense Fund, Government of Singapore, Johnson & Johnson, Southern California Edison, UCLA, US Dept. of State, United States Army, US Embassy of Athens, the United...

How social media has caused the scope of marketing to expand inside organizations, why customer service needs to pay attention to customer influence, the concept of relinquishing oversight as a way of regaining control, aligning social media policy with business strategy and integrating social media into destination websites featuring Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang).     

SHOW NOTES

01:03 -- A discussion of the different speakers lined up to present at the Digital impact conference. 

06:27 -- An overview of the broader trends in social media based on Jeremiah Owyang's research at the Altimeter Group.

07:41 -- Heather Armstrong's experience trying to fix a broken Maytag washing machine, and how she finally managed to get results by warning her twitter followers  "so that you may never have to suffer like we have: do not ever buy a Maytag.

I repeat: our Maytag experience has been a nightmare." Interestingly enough, Forbes.com story about the incident quoting Pete Blackshaw, the previous guest on this podcast, "The problem with call centers and consumer relations departments is that they tend to look at consumers in a vacuum, independent of influence," which suggests that organizations need to look beyond individual customer interactions to try evaluate the customer's social media influence, which is one of things that social CRM attempts to accomplish.  

The take away, according to Jeremiah, is that what happens in support can quickly become a marketing or public relations incident. 

08:27 -- "Customers don't care which department you are in.  They just want their problem fixed. The scope of marketing has grown significantly... Companies are siloed and it's very difficult [for them] to think holistically about their overall customer experience," says Jeremiah who will address this theme in his keynote at the Digital Impact Conference.

09:25 --  A discussion of analysts Charlene Li's upcoming book "Open Leadership," which explores the theme of how leaders can let go of control in order to gain more power back, because the power has shifted to those who are using social computing platforms and organizations need to acknowledge this.

10:24 -- Glassdoor.com, a new website where employees can rate their employers and Unvarnished, which allow you to rate your colleagues and the quality of their work, both reinforce the notion that there are no more secrets.

11:00 -- According to Jeremiah, social media policy is a key component of effective online organizational communications, and he says there are actually three different policies that organizations need to consider developing. The first is a corporate policy, which would address how to deal with the social Web, and in particular, during a crisis.  

The second is an employee disclosure policy, which would tell employees what they can say and what they can say in public spaces online.  And the third one, which he says most companies don't have in place and which might have kept Nestle out of trouble, is a community policy, which would dictate how community members should behave and describe to dos and don'ts.

11:56 -- An example of a community policy Jeremiah's seen that he thinks is well done is Dogster's Community Guidelines.  He also says early adopters like Intel, Microsoft and Sun have had community policies in place for some time now.

12:51 -- Best Buy is good example of an organization that has an effective social media policy designed to work for employees who may not have advanced degrees.

13:20 -- Inside the enterprise, legal is a common pocket of resistance.

Corporate social media policy development has become increasingly important as organizations realize that social networking is more powerful in the hands of many than the hands of a few. In many cases, employees not serving in official spokesperson roles may, in fact, have more weight influencing corporate reputation than more conventional channels like public relations and marketing.

Rather than ask, "Should companies use social media?" organizations are asking "What is the most responsible, effective way for us to use social media and should we house a set of social media corporate guidelines so that everyone understands what the boundaries are for social media usage as employees?" In this episode, we discuss many aspects of corporate social media policy, social networking policy, social media guidelines and best practices for social media policy development initiatives inside organizations.

Our guest is Chris Boudreaux created socialmediagovernance.com to provide tools and resources to leaders and managers who want to get the most from their social media and social application investments. Chris is a consultant who works with business and technology professionals to improve their marketing, sales and customer service capabilities through social media governance. He is a former product development and business transformation specialists, and a former United States Navy officer.

This is a joint interview by Paul Gillin and Eric Schwartzman, who are collaborating on a book about B2B applications of social media communications titled "Social Marketing to the Business Customer" to be published by Wiley in early 2011.

SHOW NOTES

01:58 -- The business case for empowering employees to make smart decisions through social media policy.

03:34 -- How specific social media policies need to be.

05:06 -- Strategic approach to social media policy development.

07:13 -- Just because a company is blocking access to social media sites from its network does not necessarily mean that that company is going to take longer to develop a social media policy. If you are developing a social media policy for an organization, your first order of business is to understand why the company is blocking access, because it may be they are doing so because social media tools do not allow them to comply with laws or regulations. In the insurance industry, for example, many companies are simply on the lock down because the penalties for making mistakes are severe.

08:40 -- Organizations can and do turn on and off access to social media sites quickly, so don't assume that because a company may be blocking access to social media sites that they are in some way going to take a longer to educate and bring up to speed over the course of a social media policy development initiative.

09:27 -- Organizational complexity, rather than an organization's size, has a bigger impact on how long it takes to develop a social media policy for organization.The more business units there are, the variety of subcultures that exists, have the potential to exacerbate the development of a social media policy.

10:45 -- The concept of having more than one social media policy, the first being a broad policy that covers all employees in the latter being a more specific policy for employees focused on social media communications.

13:22 -- Just as no one department within the organization owns and polices all corporate policies, all managers responsible for a group within the organization that is using social media for unique purposes should also be responsible for providing guidance and oversight of how a corporate social media policy applies to those efforts.

17:44 -- It is leadership's responsibility to think ahead of its employees and to try and anticipate what kind of trouble they could get into so they can establish policy to protect them. Those protections are even more important if the employee is using social media as part of their primary job function. So leadership needs to establish clear-cut boundaries for employees and then make sure everyone knows about them. It's irresponsible for leadership to steer clear of providing guidelines because they don't know what they should be yet. At the same time, Chris Boudreaux does not advocate that all organizations should empower their employees to use social media, particularly financial services organizations and other regulated entities, because social media tools may not allow them to comply with the current regulations.

20:49 -- The biggest challenge that organizations face with respect to social media engagement is that many of the technologies simply do not comply with current regulatory requirements. So either the regulations need to be changed, the various social media channels need to be improved to support audit trails or regulated companies in particular need to be careful when they use social media for medications.

22:50 -- Like American linguist William Lutz, featured on an earlier episode of this podcast about the dangers of doublespeak, Chris Boudreaux agrees there's not much sense in a policy if the people it's designed to guide can understand, So policies should be written so that they can be understood without the aid of legal counsel. and since many companies make fair social media policies public it may also be a good idea for those charged with writing the policy to collaborate with the marketing or public relations departments to ensure its accurately reflects the characteristics of the brand.

25:03 -- Regardless of the nature or legalities of any social networking group or service in which a company employee they participate, such as racially insensitive or hate speech sites, employers do not necessarily have the right to dismiss employees for participating in these types of distasteful conversations, unless they are occurring in full public view. However, if the site in question was password-protected, invite only and employer obtained access through coercion and then discovered its employees were involved and fired them as a result, they could be guilty of wiretapping charges. So the method by which an employer discovers private information on the Internet plays a big role in to the legalities of the situation.

28:55 -- There's a big difference between laws that are permissible in a state and terms and conditions an individual migrate or bye-bye to do business with the company. Nondisclosure agreements provide a functional means for individuals to forfeit certain rights in exchange for the right to gain employment with the company and subject to the terms and conditions of what is and is not permissible in any of the 50 United States, is not necessarily unlawful for an organization to ask an employee to forgo certain rights to free speech exchange for a job.

33:31 -- Social media policy needs to support the leadership style of the organization. For example, if the organization is inclusive and collaborative in its management style, that will lead to one type of social media policy. On the other hand, if you're in station is commanding control, like say Apple Computer, that will lead to a different type of social media policy. It may be naive to think you can change an organization's leadership or management style through social media policy. It is the responsibility of those charged with developing a social media policy to create one that supports the company's objectives in a way that is compatible with their existing business. "You or I may not like a lot of the answers to a lot of leaders arrive at. But we have a choice to not work for those people," says Chris Boudreaux.

35:35 -- It is always helpful when social media policy initiatives are sponsored by upper management and here's why. "The best policies are born out of a desire to utilize social media in a way that advances the corporate objectives, and to both protect the employees as well as the company. And that takes an understanding of the business which is is usually strongest among the folks who are running the business," says Chris Boudreaux.

37:14 -- End

RECOMMENDED EPISODES

*...

Corporate social media policy development has become increasingly important as organizations realize that social networking is more powerful in the hands of many than the hands of a few. 

In many cases, employees not serving in official spokesperson roles may, in fact, have more weight influencing corporate reputation than more conventional channels like public relations and marketing.

Rather than ask, "Should companies use social media?" organizations are asking "What is the most responsible, effective way for us to use social media and should we house a set of social media corporate guidelines so that everyone understands what the boundaries are for social media usage as employees?"

In this episode, we discuss many aspects of corporate social media policy, social networking policy, social media guidelines and best practices for social media policy development initiatives inside organizations.  

Our guest is Chris Boudreaux created a website that is no longer online to provide tools and resources to leaders and managers who want to get the most from their social media and social application investments.

Chris is a consultant who works with business and technology professionals to improve their marketing, sales and customer service capabilities through social media governance. 

He is a former product development and business transformation specialists, and a former United States Navy officer.  

This is a joint interview by Paul Gillin and me. We are collaborating on a book about B2B applications of social media communications titled "Social Marketing to the Business Customer.".

SHOW NOTES  

01:58 -- The business case for empowering employees to make smart decisions through social media policy.

03:34 -- How specific social media policies need to be.

05:06 -- Strategic approach to social media policy development.  

07:13 -- Just because a company is blocking access to social media sites from its network does not necessarily mean that that company is going to take longer to develop a social media policy.

If you are developing a social media policy for an organization, your first order of business is to understand why the company is blocking access, because it may be they are doing so because social media tools do not allow them to comply with laws or regulations.  

In the insurance industry, for example, many companies are simply on the lock down because the penalties for making mistakes are severe.

08:40 -- Organizations can and do turn on and off access to social media sites quickly, so don't assume that because a company may be blocking access to social media sites that they are in some way  going to take a longer to educate and bring up to speed over the course of a social media policy development initiative.

09:27 -- Organizational complexity, rather than an organization's size, has a bigger impact on how long it takes to develop a social media policy for organization.

The more business units there are, the variety of subcultures that exists, have the potential to exacerbate the development of a social media policy.

10:45 -- The concept of having more than one social media policy, the first being a broad policy that covers all employees in the latter being a more specific policy for employees focused on social media communications.

13:22 -- Just as no one department within the organization owns and polices all corporate policies, all managers responsible for a group within the organization that is using social media fo...

Scott Hanson and four other technologists manage the Dell TechCenter, an online community that helps enterprise IT professionals unravel the thorniest problems that occur when trying to integrate technology from multiple vendors.  

Dell conceived of the community in 2007 as a way to enhance loyalty among its largest customers.

Members share advice and ask questions of Hanson and the other engineers, who dispense it for free. The community is open and fully searchable, although only registered members can submit articles and comments.

The point isn’t to gain sales leads but to become an indispensable source of advice. And it’s working: In 2008, about 100 people visited the site every day. By early 2010, the count was over 5,000.

Active members gain status in the community, and access to information about new products.

A core group of 40 to 50 very active members have been designated "Masters," which means they get special recognition, advance information and even the occasional T-shirt. “What our users really want is to be noticed,” Hanson observed.  

Hanson and colleagues Jeff Sullivan, Kong Yang and Dennis Smith are celebrities of sorts in the community of enterprise customers, who frequently seek them out for meetings at trade shows and during visits to the company’s executive briefing center.

Their fame has paid off handsomely for Dell: Hanson won’t let us reveal specifics, but Dell has estimated that the TechCenter is indirectly responsible for many millions of dollars in sales each year.  Suffice to say that Hanson’s job security is insured for years to come.  

That’s despite the fact that Dell TechCenter doesn’t sell anything. The site carries no advertising and the member list is never used for promotions.

The Dell TechCenter team is adamant about that. “The last thing IT people want when they come to a technical resource is an ad asking them to buy a laptop,” Hanson says.

In this interview, he talks about the philosophies that underlie the community’s success.   This interview is guest hosted by Paul Gillin of Paul Gillin Communications. 

SHOW NOTES:

3:30 Why Dell Tech Center was started

4:40 What’s unique about Tech Center; why customers would come there in the first place

7:30 How Dell built awareness for the community; adding Technology Center links into every product.

8:45 Why content is openly available and not hidden behind a registration wall: “We really don’t want to use this as a vehicle to collect sales leads.”

9:45 Growth: From 100 to more than 5,000 daily visitors

10:45 How monitoring conversations guides administrators toward appropriate content

11:30 The content that resonates well: ‘Anything that makes the IT admin’s life easier.”

14:00 The Dell Masters Program raises the visibility of the top 40-50 participants

15:40 Who are the characters on the site and why the chemistry is important

17:20 Calculating the ROI of the Dell Tech Center; the team touches a lot of customer spending each year (specifics withheld at Dell’s request)

19:10 The importance of personality in makin the Dell connection: “It’s probably the most important thing.” A single Dell Tech Center ID didn’t resonate as well as giving individual administrators their own presences.

22:15 The importance of not trying to sell to members of the community

Sales cycles are different when we research purchasing decisions on behalf of companies and this podcast is devoted to explaining why, how and what it takes to search engine optimize your B2B content marketing.

We discuss SEO for B2B tactics like keyword discovery, B2B website SEO and how B2B sales cycles impact search optimization strategy, aligning keyword selection with marketing strategy, how to leverage off-message search phrases and much more with Lee Odden, president of Top Rank Marketing.

SEO for B2B Tactics Discussed

01:37 – B2B SEO tactics are quite different from B2C SEO tactics, according to Lee Odden.  The B2B sales cycle is often much longer than B2C sales cycles. 

When business buyers are researching an intended purchase, the keywords they search online tend to be much more exploratory, general and broad, as they educate themselves about the procuring a specific service, product or solution. 

And as they drill down and get closer to making an actual decision, their search queries get much more specific and focused.  

03:32 – Attract customers at the beginning and end of the sales cycle by examining the marketing and public relations activities that are already underway, and look for opportunities where you can apply search engine optimization. 

For example, if a company identifies and creates original content on its website based on broader, research oriented terms, and starts to acquire inbound links embedded against those terms as anchor text on other websites, their website is more likely to get found through search when a potential customer starts getting educated to make a purchase and that’s how they’d SEO their website to get found at the beginning of the buying cycle.  

04:40 – “At the same time, maybe that same company is publishing a blog, and there are a mix of keywords that represent more long tail or niche terms that are more specific. 

And the content strategy, or the content plan for the blog, can make sure that it creates content using those niche keywords over time. 

And, of course, each of those blog posts that’s about a niche topic would link back over to the product page so that people who discover that topic or that content through search can click-through and arrive over on a sales page to interact with a call to action like download a whitepaper, sign up for a webinar or contact us for a consultation,” says Lee.  

06:14 – Keyword selection should be consistent with marketing objectives, messaging and demand. 

If a company’s marketing strategy is to undercut a premium brand on price, we might try adding modifiers like “cheap” or “discount” to the search phrase to see if people are actually searching those phrases and if they are, optimize the website content for those terms, get links and try to rank for those affordability-related versions of the more general, broader keywords. 

If a category isn’t well known, if there isn’t much demand for these types of keywords, that’s where companies might apply convention PR and advertising to generate more demand for those queries.  

09:09 – Sometime the high volume keyword that people associate with a particular concept biased. 

For example, the impact of carbon emissions on the environment might be described as climate change or global warming.  The demand for global warming versus climate change is more than two to one.  But climate change is considered a more politically correct, safer phrase. 

Search engine optimization is about embracing popular language, but according to Lee,

What begins as a discussion about B2B applications of online video quickly spirals into a geek-out session about how to create live webcasts, online video streaming, production, editing, search engine optimization, archiving and file management.

If you're interested in coming up to speed on the tools and technologies available for producing live video streams, this episode featuring online video specialist Steve Garfield, author of the new book "Get Seen" is for you.

01:04 -- Steve Garfield explains when it makes sense for B2B marketers to use video, and when doesn't it, and according to Steve, many organizations have become interested in the use of online video to introduce visitors to their websites to the people and culture inside companies.

02:11 - For watching larger news events, Steve still prefers television. But the use of short, bite-sized video clips on an organization's website can be very effective. In terms of the state of online video, Steve says we've come a long way from the days when excessive buffering caused such extreme latency that videos were unwatchable.

04:09 -- The majority of consulting work that Steve provides today involves training people within organizations to use online video equipment, editing software, streaming services and video aggregation services. In the past, organizations had brought in huge production companies to create their video but according to Steve, "It just became a huge production." Today, they are looking for solutions that will allow them to communicate autonomously with video.

05:05 – Common applications of online video for B2B marketers is the use of video to show what it's like at a product rollout or “about us” type of videos that seek to humanize an organization, but since it's easier to watch than it is to read, the use of online video on an organization's website can be a competitive differentiator.

06:50 -- Steve discusses how video could be used by doctors, professional service providers and even hairstyles on their websites to give you a chance to get a feel for their personalities when you're considering who to hire.

08:27 -- Steve talks about the concept of situating all the video in a specific section of an organization's website, using Channel 9 as an example, where Robert Scoble provided the video component of that early, branded social network. But he also mentions the Zappos website, which provides access to videos from product pages, rather than in a separate, video section of the website. Steve declined to give exact numbers, but suggested that the use of video can significantly increase e-commerce transactions.

11:53 -- Even enough your video is just talking heads, the benefit is that your audience gets the chance to attach a face to a voice. Initially, particularly online, someone may launch the video and just watch it for little while, and then put the window in the background and multitask while listening only to the audio. In retrospect, as I write these show notes, I can see Steve's point because particularly when it comes to business-to-business communications, there is real value in being able to recognize someone's face after you've been listening to them online.

12:37 -- Video is an excellent way to get to know someone a much deeper level than through just audio and certainly from their text. Businesses are looking for ways to try and connect with their customers and video provides a practical solution for making that happen.

15:03 -- A discussion about the benefits of live streaming online video, as opposed to video on demand, for extending the reach of live events.

16:39 -- At the bare minimum, all you really need is an Internet connection, a laptop with a built-in WebCam and a Ustream or LiveStream account. Steve talks about a new premium application from UStream called UStream Producer that runs locally on the Mac or PC which provides better streaming video quality which he used at WCBS-TV in New York to produce a live stream of his appearance on a recent episode of their Saturday morning show. The UStream desktop application also records and archives your video And provides options for live text chat and social media sharing.

19:13 -- From a gear standpoint when it comes to choosing a camera that can be mounted on a tripod and used for streaming, Steve recommends the Canon HV20 or Canon HV30 with a Manfrotto Tripod. For microphones, Steve likes the Audio-Technica AT2020 USB mic and lavalieres he recommends the Audio-Technica ATR3350. The reason Steve likes the Canons is because many of the streaming sites require a FireWire connection, and most cameras have essentially replaced FireWire with SD cards and USB 2.0 ports, which is a file transfer activity.

21:30 -- Using UStream Producer mentioned earlier, it is possible to set up multiple camera's and create a live stream that cuts seamlessly from one camera perspective to another, however the free version only accommodates a single camera, while the premium version of the app accommodates multiple cameras. If your computer has two FireWire connections, the recommendation is to install an external FireWire card to bring multiple cameras into your computer.

22:25 -- Using LiveStream, which is Ustream's competitor, multiple cameras on different computers can log into a master account which can be out a live stream from any video camera that is currently logged in to the master account. This service also allows you to bring in YouTube and other on-demand video sources. This can be achieved with the free version of LiveStream.

24:09 -- If you're using a Mac, and want to do screen capture, Steve recommends the new version of QuickTime screen capture that's built into OS 10. however, if what you wanted to is cut to a computer screen in the context of a live stream, that can be achieved with UStream Producer or LiveStream.

27:12 -- Steve and Eric have a pretty hard-core geek out discussion of how the logistics behind live streaming a panel with four people, all mike of wireless level layers, and multiple cameras.

28:52 -- Steve mentions NewTek's TriCaster, which is the coup de grace high-end solution used by a lot of professional production companies for producing live video feeds.

33:09 -- A discussion about the bandwidth requirements for sustaining a watchable video stream online.

36:29 -- Whether it's a live stream or more feature oriented video content, organizations have the opportunity to manage viewer expectations of production quality. Nevertheless, the dear required to produce an exceptional video stream online has come down in price so significant way that it is possible to create a video stream that is as good as could be produced with professional gear using store-bought, consumer grade equipment.

38:43 -- The great thing about the Mac, according to Steve, is that they will pretty much play in the light at it any video codec. For editing, Steve uses iMovie 09 which supports QuickTime and AVCHD. before you purchase a camera, Steve recommends opening the software on your computer and checking to see what type of video codec it supports. As a last ditch effort, it is possible to download applications which will convert codecs, but of course, that adds another step to the process and decreases productivity.

42:09 -- The real challenge of producing HD video at this point, is the file size and processing power required to edit HD clips. On cameras that provide an option, Steve typically sets his camera to shoot in 720P over 1080P, just to reduce the file size and make them easier to deal with.

44:29 -- Storage requirements for archiving online video.

45:38 -- Video archive management tips.

48:09 -- The use of titles, transcripts and metadata to search engine optimize online video. The use of MacSpeech Dictate to create text transcripts of video files. As a footnote, the show notes were written using MacSpeech Dictate, but rather than use the program to create a raw text transcripts of the actual words spoken, I prefer to editorialize and summarize what was said to make it easier for the reader to get the gist of the discussion...

What begins as a discussion about B2B applications of online video quickly spirals into a geek-out session about how to create live webcasts, online video streaming, production, editing, search engine optimization, archiving and file management.  

If you're interested in coming up to speed on the tools and technologies available for producing live video streams, this episode featuring online video specialist Steve Garfield, author of the new book "Get Seen" is for you.

01:04 -- Steve Garfield explains when it makes sense for B2B marketers to use video, and when doesn't it, and according to Steve, many organizations have become interested in the use of online video to introduce visitors to their websites to the people and culture inside companies.

02:11 -  For watching larger news events, Steve still prefers television. But the use of short, bite-sized video clips on an organization's website can be very effective.  In terms of the state of online video, Steve says we've come a long way from the days when excessive buffering caused such extreme latency that videos were unwatchable.

04:09 -- The majority of consulting work that Steve provides today involves training people within organizations to use online video equipment, editing software, streaming services and video aggregation services.  In the past, organizations had brought in huge production companies to create their video but according to Steve, "It just became a huge production." Today, they are looking for solutions that will allow them to communicate autonomously with video.  

05:05 – Common applications of online video for B2B marketers is the use of video to show what it's like at a product rollout or “about us” type of videos that seek to humanize an organization, but since it's easier to watch than it is to read, the use of online video on an organization's website can be a competitive differentiator.  

06:50 -- Steve discusses how video could be used by doctors, professional service providers and even hairstyles on their websites to give you a chance to get a feel for their personalities when you're considering who to hire.

08:27 -- Steve talks about the concept of  situating all the video in a specific section of an organization's website, using Channel 9 as an example, where Robert Scoble provided the video component of that early, branded social network.  But he also mentions the Zappos website, which provides access to videos from product pages, rather than in a separate, video section of the website. Steve declined to give exact numbers, but suggested that the use of video can significantly increase e-commerce transactions.

11:53 --  Even enough your video is just talking heads, the benefit is that your audience gets the chance to attach a face to a voice. Initially, particularly online, someone may launch the video and just watch it for little while, and then put the window in the background and multitask while listening only to the audio.

In retrospect, as I write these show notes, I can see Steve's point because particularly when it comes to business-to-business communications, there is real value in being able to recognize someone's face after you've been listening to them online.

12:37 -- Video is an excellent way to get to know someone a much deeper level than through just audio and certainly from their text.  Businesses are looking for ways to try and connect with their customers and video provides a practical solution for making that happen.  

15:03 -- A discussion about the benefits of live streaming online video, as opposed to video on demand, for extending the reach of live events.   16:39 -- At the bare minimum,

To get found online, organizations are using social media to engage in a war of information to win the trust and confidence of their constituents.

Former DoD analyst Mark Drapeau, PhD., who is currently an online public diplomacy director at Microsoft, explains how to dominate your information spectrum with lethal generosity.

This is a recording of a presentation he delivered at my Social Media Master Class on Jan. 29, 2010 in Washington, D.C.. To attend an upcoming social media workshop, visit www.ericschwartzman.com for dates and locations.

SHOW NOTES

01:24 – Mark talks about his experience prior to joining Microsoft at National Defense University, which is affiliated with the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the U.S. Department of Defense, where he studied emerging technologies and their impact on national security. His mandate at Microsoft is to create “proactively social content” that engages communities, including state, local and federal government offices.

03:31 – “Nature abhors a vacuum.” Empty spaces will be filled by something. And so, if you work in fashion, or you work in IT, whatever you do, if there’s a niche, it will be filled by someone’s content. When you search for a topic, fashion, shoes, computers, is someone finding your stuff? That’s the premise I start with,” says Mark. There’s an information war taking place by organizations who want to get found online. But what’s more important than analyzing your traffic, according to Mark, is understanding your audience, what they want and how to engage them. In his case, if someone is searching “Government 2.0” he wants to make sure people are finding his content.

05:01 – For organizations, Mark sees new media communications as a form of public diplomacy that can be used to educate the marketplace and increase the receptiveness of Microsoft’s customers to their policies, products and services. Public diplomacy is the act of influencing, engaging and activating the public – softening the battlefield – and it is used by government agencies and companies to help their organizations achieve certain goals.

07:23 – The convention protocol by which information moves from organization to individual is inefficient, based on the various layers of approval corporate information needs to clear before it winds up reaching the customer. The press release is an excellent example of this. But what’s happening is by using social media to communicate with others, what’s happening is that a lot of people are bypassing official company channels in the process. They’re not official spokespersons, but they’re reaching people. So while organizations struggle to clear official information through the various layers of approval, unofficial voices in social media are filling the vacuum. Because in most cases, big organizations are slow, and cycling information through their chain of command simply can’t keep pace with open source information. And whenever there is a significant gap between information that can be crowd sourced via open source, and the organization’s own, online presence, that organization loses the trust of the community.

08:35 – People are sharing information and educating one another through Twitter and Facebook. Sharing information with your online social network has becomes a social norm, and by contrast, organizations that fail to behave this way are seen as antisocial. The important thing to understand about social media is that it’s more about being social than it is about understanding media or technology. It’s not about the tools; it’s about interacting with other people.

09:21 – “What amazing to me is that if you into the marketing department, or the PR group at a government agency and you ask them “Can you name 5 customers or 5 fans of our company?’ they will have a hard time answering that question. Because, at the end of the day, they are not being social with the kind of people that actually care about the organization,” says Mark. Being social means really caring about a community of people that care about your organization, or topics in which your organization has a vested interest, and that distinction is important because people are more likely to join an issue-specific community than they would be to join your company’s community. People are passionate about issues like sustainability and clean water, and they’ll follow a Facebook fan page about that topic, but they’re going to be much less enthusiastic about your company’s own Facebook fan page.

11:21 – Social media engagement should be proactive, not just reactive. Mark uses the Transportation Security Administration blog as an example of a social media program that is excessively reactive. It’s better than nothing, he says, but he’d rather see them blogging about broader issues like the future of transportation security and how the international community is addressing them. And Mark says, this is because big organizations are afraid to be the first to take a public position on issues, for fear of being wrong. So they’re always playing defensive rather than offensive. “The best offense is a good offense,” he says. “Be out there in front.”

12:38 – Mark acknowledges that being out in front is risky, but no risk, no reward, he says. As an example, Mark references Peter Shankman’s book “Can We Do That?” we contains a lot of good examples of various client engagements where his PR firm took a risk. Careful with the crazy ideas you come up with. You just might have to do one of them.

14:14 – Mark discusses the article “The Message is the Message” by Jennifer Senior which ran in Aug. 2, 2009 about the online ubiquity of Obama’s presidential campaign. He was everywhere, and the Republicans couldn’t keep up with him. “If you are filling those vacuums, and you’re dominating your community’s information spectrum -- everywhere someone’s looking for stuff there’s something by you: guest postings, you have an article in a magazine, video content, whatever it is -- if you can dominate that information spectrum, sometimes it doesn’t even matter what you actually say, because people will recognize you as thought leader if you just have a presence and it’s decent,” says Mark. “It’s got to be decent, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be outstanding if you’re a consistent contributor all the time.” Obama was perceived as dominating the presidential race and leading the news stories because he was everywhere.

15:32 – Mark shares Gary Vaynerchuck’s line “Content is king, but marketing is the queen, and she rules the castle,” meaning great content’s not enough. You also have to get it out there. You have to know where your community is and how to get to them. MySpace may be out of favor with social media pundits, but the research shows MySpace users tend to be in red states and less likely to be college educated, so trying to reach that audience through Facebook is going to be far less efficient. Figure out where you’re audience is and focus of those social media channels most likely to reach them.

19:53 – Rather than focus on solely on the numbers is an indicator of a social media program’s effectiveness, Mark gauges success by whether or not his efforts are delivering value to his community. He counts thank yous, not click throughs. He knows he did a job last year with socials media not by reviewing his bit.ly click-throughs, but by the number of Christmas cards he receives from people he originally met online than he did the previous year.

21:22 -- A course delegate tells Mark that the only thing that speaks to her superior is metrics, so she can say she’s adding value or getting Christmas cards, but at the end of the day, he approves here budget. Mark responds by saying that if your getting good content out through social media, it’s going to wind up reaching people over your superior, and it’s going to get back through their social network that you’re adding value by filling the vacuum with your organization’s messages. Focus on delivering genuine value to the community, and your superior will see that value through other channels.

23:50 – Determine who the experts...